The Stoddard mss., 1871-1877, are letters written to Richard Henry Stoddard in his role as editor of The Aldine, a literary journal, chiefly in response to his request for materials for his book Poets' Homes, published in 1877.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., discusses the photographs of his father and his home, the best of which is in Putnam's Homes of American Authors, and makes reference to his father's works. William Dean Howells notes payment for a poem and recalls once again Stoddard's kindnesses to him when he first came to New York. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is concerned about the writer for the sketch for the engraving and prefers George Washington Greene to William Dean Howells since he "is most familiar with the house." Mary Newmarch Prescott offers the lines "To a Blackbird" for publication in The Aldine. Edmund Clarence Stedman has just read proof and will "examine the points, seriatim, by Keats' text. It is the kind of paper which...will do unusual credit to Scribners." Bayard Taylor wishes Stoddard to call upon William Wetmore Story to give his lecture on art - "Story finds he is better appreciated here than in Boston." Story visited America in 1877 at which time Taylor was a professor at Cornell University. John Greenleaf Whittier includes a brief autobiographical sketch, beginning with birthdate, points out that he was "an Elector of both elections of Lincoln," and comments on the picture to be used with the text.

The collection is accompanied by the volume of Poets' Homes, Boston, D. Lothrop & Co., 1877, from which the letters were removed.