The Spring-Rice papers consist almost entirely of personal correspondence. His correspondents fall into four main groups; his family, English friends, many of whom he had met at Eton or Oxford, fellow members of the Foreign Office and of the Diplomatic Service, and prominent Americans including Theodore Roosevelt, whom he had met during his periods of service in Washington. On the whole the correspondence contains far more information about the social background of a diplomatic life than about his official activities. The main exception is the correspondence with Sir Valentine Chirol of the Times with whom Spring-Rice discussed a great variety of political questions. There are also a few official papers from Spring-Rice's service in Persia [now Iran] in 1900 and a set of carbon copies of his semi-official letters from St. Petersburg in 1905-06. They include an account of early examples of Russian espionage.