The Rex Stout papers document Stout’s family life, political activism, and writing career. This includes the writing, publication, and adaptation of his successful Nero Wolfe novels and short stories, as well as other fiction and nonfiction works in print and for radio. His membership and leadership in political and literary organizations such as the Authors' Guild and the Authors' League of America, the Baker Street Irregulars, Freedom House, the Screen Writers' Guild, the Society for the Prevention of World War III, the Writers' War Board, and the Writers Board for World Government is well documented. Also represented are materials about the planning and construction of his family’s Connecticut estate, High Meadow, and his hobbies, such as gardening and cooking.

Materials include artwork, booklets, carbon copies, certificates, contact prints, comic strips, correspondence, dust jackets, galley proofs, floorplans, ledgers, manuscripts, negatives, posters, radio scripts, transcripts, and typescripts.

Some of the topics covered in the collection include the Hollywood Blacklist, cooking, communism, gardening, global politics, mystery and detective fiction, unions, and World War II. Items of special interest include correspondence from the actress Marlene Dietrich, writers Upton Sinclair and Phlip José Farmer, and mathematician Norbert Wiener.