There are 153 letters in this collection, many addressed to Aubrey Lackington Moore, an English writer who tried to reconcile evolution and traditional Christianity. Some letters discuss scientific questions of the day, while others are formal social notes. Also includes 24 clipped signatures, inlcuding those of Sir Henry Wentworth Acland; Goerge Bentham; H. A. Bruce; S. H. Butcher; Matthewss Duncan; Percy Gardner; George Gritchett; G. Grote; Alfred Cort Haddon; Sir Prescott Gardner Hewitt; William Guyer Hunter; Thomas Henry Huxley; John Lingard; Thomas Babington Macauley; Miss K. Aubrey Moore; Louis Pasteur; Sir John Russell Reynolds, bart.; Thomas Smith; James Leigh Strachan-Davidson; Agnes Strickland; and Arthur Thomason.

A prime exponent of evolutionary theory in the late nineteenth century, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace arrived independently at the theory of natural selection nearly simultaneously with Charles Darwin. The numerous publications that emerged from his extended field excusions into the Amazon Basin and the Malay Archipelago (Indonesia) Wallace resulted in major contributions to evolutionary theory, biogeography, ecology, and ethnography, and made Wallace, by the end of his life, one of the best known naturalists in Britain. A Socialist, social progressive, and Spiritualist, Wallace's distinctive take on evolutionary change differed from the Darwinian mainstream in significant ways. The Wallace Collection is a miscellaneous assemblage of letters written by and to Alfred Russel Wallace, primarily during the last twenty five years of his life. Varied in content, the letters touch on Wallace's views on evolution, Spiritualism, and to a less degree, his progressive social commitments.