This series includes correspondence with family members, fellow artists, and other personal and professional contacts. Early letters include letters from Anshutz to family while a student at the National Academy in the 1870s, and to his brother from Europe in 1892 and 1893. Letters from Anshutz to his wife, Effie, include many letters from Philadelphia in 1893 and 1894, and from a long river excursion in New Jersey in 1897. Letters from Anshutz to Frank Cresson Schell (1900-1903, 1911 and undated), a former student, discuss his own painting, Schell's artwork and the progress of his students at the Darby School. Correspondence dating from 1905 to 1911 consists of letters from various personal and professional contacts to Anshutz or to his wife. Several letters from clients refer to payments made for portraits. Other significant correspondents include the artists Charles Francis Browne (1908), David Wilson Jordan (1908), Francis Grafly (1910), Edward W. Redfield (1910), Malcolm Stewart (1909-1910), Samuel S. Fleisher (1911), and Daniel Garber (undated).

Three envelopes without letters may have contained illustrated letters, which were loaned to the archives for microfilming but later returned to the donor. A total of eighteen illustrated letters, which are no longer in the collection, can be viewed on microfilm reel 140.

Correspondence is arranged chronologically, with undated letters placed at the end of the group. Dates written on correspondence in pencil were transcribed from envelopes, which were then discarded, by Archives staff upon accession of the collection. Other notations may have also been made at that time.