George Antheil was born on July 8, 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey. He studied briefly with Constantin von Sternberg and Ernest Bloch. In 1922, he traveled to Europe to pursue a career as a concert pianist, performing many of his own works such as Mechanisms, Airplane Sonata, and Sonata Sauvage. The riots that his music caused contributed to the composer's growing notoriety. In Berlin he met Stravinsky, who exerted the single most important influence on his compositional style.

The collection consists of George Antheil's correspondence. All but one of the letters are photocopies; the dates range from 1920 to 1959. The materials were collected by Charles Amirkhanian.