USC's English Honorary Society, Epsilon Phi, was organized in 1929 in response to a need on the part of the English department faculty and students for a society to promote mutual interest and appreciation in literature. The society remained very active during the 1930s, bringing many noted people to the University for lectures. However, the society was inactive during the first half of the 1940s due to World War II, and re-activated in 1947 with an ongoing agenda of panel discusssions, lectures, theatre parties, musicales, professors-at-home meetings, and dinner-discussions.

The records in this collection consist of membership rosters, correspondence, historical notes, and general ephemera pertaining to the Epsilon Fraternity, chiefly between 1948 and 1950. Some of the earlier materials (from the 1930s) contain announcements of visiting literary notables such as Robert Frost, Sherwood Anderson, Christopher Morley, Hamlin Garland, Carl Sandburg, and Ray Bradbury.