The Huntington Library is dedicated to the study of Anglo-American civilization. Outside its chosen fields it is confined in the main to works which a scholar concentrating in one of these fields may wish to consult in order to learn what was happening elsewhere or at other times. For the Middle Ages it has no more than a fair representation of the original and secondary materials, though the presence of sets like Acta Sanctorum compensates to some extent for the absence of many smaller works. The purchase of the late T. F. Tout’s books provided a good, working library for the medievalist. Though the Library contains the largest number of individual titles (but not of volumes) of incunabula in any collection in the Americas (listed in Incunabula in the Huntington Library by H. R. Mead, 1937), and has several thousand books in European languages, it is comparatively weak in Continental works. In general, the Continental authors represented, often by translations, are those known to have influenced Anglo-Saxondom.

The Library's great strength develops with the Renaissance and, so far as Great Britain is concerned, declines gradually after 1641 until 1800. After the latter date there are, for English literature, many first editions of classics and much correspondence of their writers, together with some authors' manuscripts. For English history there are the standard works and lives and letters of foreign secretaries and diplomats concerned with Anglo-American relations, together with a fair sampling of the descriptions of the United States written by English travellers. American history and literature are very strongly represented until about 1900, after which time the concentration is upon the Southwest to the comparative neglect of the rest of the United States.