The papers of Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) span the years 1743-1945, with the bulk of the material dating from 1885 to Cleveland's death in 1908. Most of the collection relates to Cleveland's first presidential administration (1885-1889) and includes correspondence, diaries, messages to Congress, speeches, writings, printed matter, and other papers. The collection is divided into eleven series, the first nine of which are reproduced on microfilm. A detailed description of the arrangement and content of the original part of the Cleveland Papers is contained in the published guide to the microfilm edition, Index to the Grover Cleveland Papers . The index provides a list of names of writers and recipients of letters, but not a subject index. Annual and veto messages, inaugural addresses, and diaries are indexed under Cleveland's name. Series 10, Printed Matter, was not filmed. The introduction to the index also provides a history of the collection.

The Additions series of the Grover Cleveland Papers, designated as Series 11 of the collection, is also unfilmed. It comprises previously undescribed parts of the original collection and material received by the Library from 1970 to 2017 and is organized in subseries according to the year each addition was processed.

The 1970-1979 Addition consists almost entirely of correspondence dated 1882-1906, most of it original documents with some transcriptions and photo reproductions. Correspondents include Norval B. Bacon, August Belmont, John T. Carey, Alonzo B. Cornell, L. Clarke Davis, Donald McDonald Dickinson, Robert Dosia, John H. Finley, James A. Gibson, Thomas Nelson Haskell, Robert P. Hayes, Robert Underwood Johnson, Edward B. Pond, William H. Rideing, Francis L. Stetson, John A. Sullivan, and John DeWitt Warner.

The 1984 Addition contains material from Cleveland's work with the Association of Life Insurance Presidents. Cleveland was retained as chairman and counsel of the association and was elected its president in 1907. The file includes letters from Cleveland and his wife Frances Folsom Cleveland, promotional material, and financial records.

The 1997 Addition includes an autograph album signed in 1886 by Cleveland, members of his cabinet, and other prominent persons. Correspondence includes a letter to Fitzhugh Lee and letters to and from William Lyne Wilson (1843-1900), who served as postmaster general during Cleveland's second administration.

The 2005 Addition, by far the largest of the additions, is primarily concerned with the presidential election of 1892. This addition contains correspondence, chiefly incoming letters, campaign ephemera, printed matter, newspaper clippings, and miscellaneous material. The alphabetical file of correspondence is solely concerned with the election and includes letters from Wilson Shannon Bissell, John Griffin Carlisle, William Russell Grace, William F. Harrity, Thomas Goode Jones, Alton B. Parker, Nehemiah George Ordway, Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, Thomas Gaskell Shearman, Adlai Stevenson (1835-1914), William Freeman Vilas, and William Lyne Wilson. Additional correspondence from Carlisle, Parker, and Vilas is in the chronological file of correspondence. Much of the correspondence in the alphabetical file comes from Democratic Party activists from all parts of the country. Their letters provide detailed insight on local and state politics and how they may affect the presidential election. Other election topics frequently covered in the correspondence include the Populist (or “People's”) Party and its presidential candidate James B. Weaver, the “Force Bill” (a federal elections law proposed by the Republicans requiring that federal elections be supervised by the federal government as an attempt to enfranchise African American voters in the South), tariff reform, Tammany Hall, and the Texas gubernatorial race in which the Democratic Party split over the contest between George W. Clark and incumbent James Stephen Hogg. Other material from the presidential campaign of 1892 includes posters, broadsides, invitations, endorsements, news clippings, congratulatory correspondence, and letters requesting a job appointment with the new administration.

The 2007 Addition includes congratulatory letters from future president William H. Taft, Solomon R. Guggenheim, Adlai Stevenson (1835-1914), and Rutherford Birchard Hayes. Personal correspondence includes letters from Emma Harmon Folsom Perrine, the mother of Cleveland's wife Frances Folsom Cleveland. Letters acknowledging gifts often have handwritten notes by Cleveland in shorthand. The addition also includes a reminiscence by Cyrus P. Jones, a Buffalo Democrat, of the Cleveland mayoralty that he sent to the Cleveland family along with a volume of 1882 “Minutes of the Ninth Ward Cleveland Club.”

The 2014 Addition consists of a single letter written by Cleveland to Edwin Darling concerning the death of Darling's brother, John, and related financial matters.

The 2023 Addition includes correspondence and a diary from Frances Folsom Cleveland. The correspondence primarily consists of letters to Frances Cleveland's mother, Emma Harmon Folsom Perrine, and includes a number of letters written after Grover Cleveland's death in 1908. The diary dates from 1890 to 1892 and records her and Grover Cleveland's activities during this time.

Items in the Oversize series are from the 2005 and 2007 additions and consist of posters, broadsides, songs, and poems related to the 1892 presidential campaign and blueprints of a lodge at Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts.