The R. L. Barth papers consist of manuscripts, paste-ups, chapbooks, and file copies of small press poetry published by the Robert L. Barth Press from the time of its founding in 1981 until the press ceased in the early 2000s. The collection also includes Barth's correspondence with poets Turner Cassity, Dick Davis, John Finlay, Charles Gullans, X. J. Kennedy, Janet Lewis, Timothy Steele, and Wesley Trimpi. Notable among the correspondence is a file of letters from Barth to Timothy Steele, which spans 1981 to 2000, along with an additional letter written in February of 2022. Timothy Steele and Victoria Lee Steele provided the following biographical information (abridged here) when they donated an accrual to the R. L. Barth papers in 2022: "Robert L. Barth (1947-) was not only a publisher, but is also a poet and editor. In the latter capacity, he has edited both the selected letters and the selected poems of Yvor Winters and the selected poems of Winter's wife, Janet Lewis. As a poet, he is best known for his poems about the Vietnam War, in which he served as a young Marine in the late 1960s, at the height of the conflict." See the unabridged quote under this finding aid's biographical note.