Isabel Bishop's correspondence spans over forty years, with the bulk of it dating between 1960 and 1973. Letters found here are both personal and professional. There are separate files of correspondence with artists Warren Chappell, R. B. Kitaj, and Edward Laning, poet John Canaday and his wife Katherine, and physicist John M. Frankland. Over half of the letters to Bishop from Warren Chappell are illustrated.

Bishop's chronological general correspondence primarily consists of incoming letters, with a few outgoing letters. Bishop was friends with many artists and cultural figures and her correspondence includes letters to and from artists such as John Taylor Arms, Peggy Bacon, Peter Blume, Warren Chappell, Sidney Delevante, Edwin Dickinson, Philip Evergood, John Folinsbee, Malvina Hoffman, Jo Hopper, James Kearns, Leon Kroll, Clare Leighton, Jack Levine, Alice Neel, Hobson Pittman, Fairfield Porter, Abraham Rattner, Katherine Schmidt, Henry Schnakenberg, Raphael Soyer, George Tooker, Stuyvesant Van Veen, Franklin Watkins, Mahonri Young, and William Zorach. Bishop also corresponded with poets, authors, historians, and dancers, such as Van Wyck Brooks, John Ciardi, Merce Cunningham, Babette Deutsch, Edna Ferber, Richmond Lattimore, Marianne Moore, Lewis Mumford, Kurt Vonnegut, and Glenway Westcott. There are also letters from many galleries, museums, and schools which exhibited or purchased her work, including Juliana Force and Una Johnson, and art organizations.

This series has been scanned in its entirety.