Collection consists of material from Morris' naval career as well as his writing career, including manuscripts, research correspondence, newspaper columns, letters and papers from readers of his works, book reviews and bound volumes of his published works. The collection begins with documents and photographs relating to his life as a student at the United States Naval Academy such as class registers, manuals, class work, family correspondence, navy correspondence and papers. These documents offer one a glimpse at Donald Morris as a person, his experiences as a midshipman in the Naval Academy of the forties and later in active military service as well as his thoughts on the navy as a career. Class work but more so letters to his family enable one to see his development as a writer and some of the experiences that later inspired his writing. Similarly, his training and work experience between 1956 and 1972 provides a contextualizing platform of sorts for his journalistic career after 1972. The collection has a considerable number of papers arising from Morris' writing and journalistic career. They include numerous manuscripts and drafts of various published and unpublished articles, published works, research notes, research correspondence and some primary sources employed in the writing of The washing of the spears, correspondence with literary agents and publishers, legal documents relating to the publication of his works, book reviews, Houston post cuttings, copies of the Donald R. Morris Newsletter, itineraries and some literature on African politico-economics. This material viewed in the context of his navy papers and the available material on his naval reserve career phase, offers the researcher the opportunity to see not only some of the experiences and literature that went towards informing Morris' writing process but also the writing process itself from its nascent stages to completion as he experienced it. The collection also has a limited number of papers relating to his family and a section dedicated to his other interests. They include artwork (sketches), poetry, aviation and items he collected as part of his interest in WWI, including a number of military manuals that belonged to Laurence T. Stallings Jr., the father of Morris' first wife Sylvia Poteat Stallings, World War I veteran, literary critic, screenwriter, novelist, photographer (among other things) best known for his book against war: The first World War: a photographic history.
