The papers in Part 1 primarily emphasize Nash's writing for the stage, screen, and television. There are major series of Correspondence and Personal Papers, and Production Files, with a small series entitled Other Scripts and Drafts.

Within the CORRESPONDENCE AND PERSONAL PAPERS are located Nash's general and specific files of correspondence, both personal and professional. Included is correspondence concerning his other business and recreational activities, such as a file from Country Crafts, his Bucks County, Pennsylvania, furniture building and refinishing business; his laundromat; a secretarial project; and several files of letters from realtors and builders engaged in renovating Nash's Bucks County home. The remainder of the correspondence generally deals with royalties, sales of books and production rights; letters from his lawyers, agents, and business consultants (especially Leonard Strauss), and other financial and legal letters. Additional financial records are filed separately, and mainly consist of royalty and income statements from Nash's book sales and fees from productions. Personal papers include address books, articles about and by Nash, desk diaries, and school papers. There are several folders of Nash's early school essays and exams, notes, assignments, and records. There are also papers from an acting class Nash taught, and from private tutoring sessions.

The researcher should note the annotation on the letter from “Carl Sandburg” and the photocopied letter attached to the letter from “William Faulkner” have been deemed to be forgeries.

PRODUCTION FILES form the major portion of the collection and include material on Nash's produced and unproduced works in several media. Although a prolific playwright, Nash also wrote screenplays, novels, short stories, and teleplays. Most well represented are Nash's plays, especially the largest or most successful of his works, including The Happy Time, Here Come the Brides, Keep It In the Family, The Rainmaker, and Wildcat. Most of the works, which have been arranged alphabetically by title, are represented by drafts and final versions of scripts or screenplays. Since many of the scripts were undated, an attempt was made to arrange them according to the changes made throughout the editing process. In this way, the researcher can follow the progression of drafts, which is particularly interesting to note in The Rainmaker. This production, which was originally written as a teleplay, was subsequently rewritten and altered to become a screenplay, play, and musical (110 in the Shade).

Other materials found in the Production Files include outlines, treatments, synopses or summaries, story ideas and notes, scattered correspondence, clippings, a few financial reports of the production's success, programs, reviews, music, and foreign and published versions of scripts. Nash's annotations are extensive throughout the collection.

OTHER SCRIPTS AND DRAFTS include fragments of plays and scripts which cannot be identified, and scripts written by other authors, including a typescript play by Nash's son, Cristopher Nash. There is one folder of miscellaneous material regarding Playwrights '54, ideas for plays and songs, articles collected by Nash, notes, and a copy of a Greek volume, EATPO, containing one of Nash's works.