Alexander Humphreys Woollcott became famous in American literary and drama circles as an author, critic, and actor. Woollcott worked for several influential New York magazines and newspapers as well as radio. Woollcott wrote several novels and portrayed himself in Kaufman and Hart's "The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1940), a play based on Woollcott himself. The collection contains a single letter to a "little struggler" regarding work doing book reviews.

Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943) was an "American author, critic, and actor known for his acerbic wit". He graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York in 1909. Woollcott became a cub reporter and then a drama critic in 1914 for the New York Times. From 1917-1918, he reported for Stars and Stripes in the U.S. army. Afterwards, he returned to work for the Times and for several other publications: New York Herald, New York World and The New Yorker. In 1929, Woolcott established a reputation for himself in the radio field and became known as the "town crier" for his wit and gossip. Woollcott greatly influenced the nation's book-buying trends as a literary critic and was the self-appointed leader of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal luncheon group at New York City's Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s and 1930s. Woollcott played himself in the title role of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1940). He authored "Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting, and the Problems of Production" (1917), "Two Gentlemen and a Lady" (1928), and "While Rome Burns" (1934). Woollcott published two anthologies: "The Woollcott Reader" (1935) and "Woollcott's Second Reader" (1937).

This collection (undated) contains a single letter from Woollcott to a "little struggler" regarding work doing book reviews.