The Federal Writers' Project materials in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division are part of a larger collection titled The U.S. Work Projects Administration Federal Writers' Project and Historical Records Survey.
The holdings from the Federal Writers' Project span the years 1889-1942 and cover a wide range of topics and subprojects. Altogether, the Federal Writers' holdings number approximately 300,000 items and consist of correspondence, memoranda, field reports, notes, graphs, charts, preliminary and corrected drafts of essays, oral testimony, folklore, miscellaneous administrative and miscellaneous other material.
The American Memory collection presented here is a coherent portion of the larger Federal Writers' series. It includes the life histories and corollary documents assembled by the Folklore Project with the Federal Writers' effort.