The collection consists of records for various subsidiary company responsible for either manufacturing or selling composing and printing machinery or supplying consumables required by the printing trades. There are also copies of documents provided by the Mergenthaler Linotype Company of New York, set up in 1886 to build composing machines in the United States. Later, the Merganthaler Linotype Company and the Linotype & Machinery Co Ltd agreed terms as to who would build and sell the machines globally. As part of the agreement in 1909 after swapping shares they created a holding company to look after the shares, it was called Linotype International Limited.

Series of records contain Articles of Association, deed and mortgage registers, minutes of various meetings, stocks and share records, customer order books, correspondence, operation and service manuals, machine registers, typeface specimen books, trade literature and brochures, various in-house publications and a series of bound copies of patents for machines and resulting improvements to them registered both in the United States of America, United Kingdom and Europe.