In the summer of 1967 the papers of Ludwig Wittgenstein that were known to exist in England were temporarily collected at Oxford and microfilmed for Cornell University. This endeavor was supervised by Professors Norman Malcolm and Georg Henrik von Wright. In the same year the Austrian portion of Wittgenstein's papers was filmed at Cornell. A master negative of the entire collection is held by the Cornell University Libraries. The copyright owners are the literary trustees of the Wittgenstein estate, whose permission must be secured in order to quote from or publish any of the material.

The 22 reels of the Wittgenstein Papers contain drafts of his published works, lecture outlines, reading notes, typescripts, undated fragments, dictations, and many notebooks. The notebooks cover the full range of his career and are often in English. There is no correspondence. The collection documents the development of Wittgenstein's thought and his lasting contributions to the philosophy of language, logical theory, the foundations of mathematics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind.

Of historical interest are an early version of the Tractatus, the beginnings of the Blue and Brown Books, and various stages of the Investigations. A series of essays, probably dating to 1933, contains titles such as "Komplex und Tatsache," "Begriff und Gegenstand," and "Unendliche Möglichkeit." Undated fragments, some of which go on for several pages, bear titles like "Man könnte die ganze Sache --," "Das Bild der Cantorschen Überlegung --," and "folgt? Ist das Verstehen?" Other items of historical interest include notes dictated by Wittgenstein to G. E. Moore in 1914 and the so-called "Dictation for Schlick."

An 11-page inventory provides chronological and subject access to the collection. There is no proper name index, however.