The John J. McAleer faculty papers document his research and writing of three works on American authors: Theodore Dreiser: An Introduction and Interpretation (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968); Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter (Little, Brown,1984); and Rex Stout: A Biography (Little, Brown, 1977).

McAleer's Theodore Dreiser papers include manuscripts for An Introduction as well as for scholarly articles and reviews of works about Dreiser. These papers also include works of other authors on Dreiser, most significantly of Marguerite Tjader Harris, an author with whom McAleer edited a collection of Dreiser works, Notes on Life (University of Alabama Press, 1974). Correspondence, ephemera, reviews by other authors of publications about Dreiser (including McAleer's works), and a few pages of original Dreiser manuscripts compose the rest of the Dreiser series.

Ralph Waldo Emerson materials are limited to one set of drafts and two sets of galley proofs for Days of Encounter.

The bulk of the McAleer papers pertain to his work on Rex Stout. McAleer was Stout’s authorized biographer and corresponded with him extensively, including a long-running series of biographical questionnaires from 1972-1975. Stout also gave some of his personal papers and photographs to McAleer during the biography project. McAleer used his Stout research to write numerous short works, a Rex Stout Newsletter (published in The Armchair Detective during 1979), and the independently-published Rex Stout Journal. The network of relationships that McAleer built to aid his research grew into a literary society, the Wolfe Pack. Materials include correspondence, ephemera, manuscripts (from both Stout and McAleer), newspaper clippings, proofs, and photographs.