This series contains the drafts, typescripts, and page-proofs of a variety of Lalley's writings. The types of writings are book reviews, articles and editorials, fiction, speeches and interview transcripts.

In his early writing career Lalley tried his hand at fiction especially stories and plays. These along with some poems and a children's book are filed alphabetically by title.

Reviews of books formed a large part of Lalley's writing. The publication in which these draft reviews appeared is not always identified, but some appeared in Modern Age. There is one group of reviews that Lalley appeared to have collected perhaps to be re-published together. It is possible that these originally appeared as "Posting the Books" in the Post.

Drafts of some of Lalley's Washington Post editorials are also in this series along with longer articles he wrote either for newspapers or magazines. It is not always clear where these appeared, and they have been arranged alphabetically by the working title Lalley assigned. There are also spiral notebooks of holograph drafts of writings. These appear to be of articles and reviews from the 1960s and 1970s.

Three items were identified as speeches Lalley delivered on editors, on Russian Igor Gouzenko in Canada, and on Irish poet James Clarence Mangan. There is also the transcript of an interview of Lalley and Anne Freemantle speaking about the American short story.

In 1946 Lalley was asked by Federal Trade Commissioner Lowell Mason to participate in an informal conference called "Operation 1600." The purpose of this two-day meeting was to discuss ways to improve industry trade practices and business ethics. Other participants were sociologist Edwin H. Sutherland, lawyers, Morris I. Leibman and Charles W. Mander, and economist Chesterfield Oppenheim. A complete transcript of the discussion is in this series.