The fonds consists of records produced by Skelton during the course of his life and career, documenting his activities as a poet, scholar, teacher, prose fiction writer, critic, editor and white witch. Records relate to activities including his co-founding of the University of Victoria Department of Creative Writing, his editorship of "The Malahat Review", his involvement with the Lotus Press in England and the Pharos Press and Sono Nis Press in Victoria, his collaboration with Ann Saddlemyer on the "Collected Works of J. M. Synge" and "The World of W. B. Yeats", a symposium and exhibition held in 1965 honouring the centenary of Yeats' birth, and his association with such writers as Wilfred Rowland Childe and Bonamy Dobree. Skelton's correspondents include T. S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Robert Graves, Margaret Atwood, Earle Birney, Bonamy Dobree, Paul Theroux, Kathleen Raine and many others.

The fonds consists of records relating to Saddlemyer's research on "Letters to Molly: John Millington Synge to Maire O'Neill" (1971), "Lady Gregory: Collected Plays" (1971), "Anglo-Irish Writers, 1911-1969", and the W.B. Yeats Symposium. The fonds include typescripts, galley and page proofs, correspondence, and a complete set of the typescripts of essays presented at the Yeats Symposium.