LibGuides: Primary Sources about Women: Diaries and Letters

Finding Aids for UVA Special Collections

A Guide to Materials on Women at UVA Special Collections Library
This guide can help you find materials on women in the UVA Special Collections Library. "This guide covers accessions #38-1 through #3675 (with occasional higher numbers) and includes information on approximately one-third of the collections in Special Collections."
Finding Aid for UVA Special Collections Library Holdings
Search this database for rare and unique materials held by UVA Special Collections (and other Virginia institutions). Enter your keyword, then select "University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept." under repository to limit to that library.

Digital Diary Resources

North American Women's Letters and Diaries (UVA only)
Searchable full text database of American and Canadian women's letters and diaries written from the colonial period until 1950.
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries (UVA only)
Searchable full text database of diaries and letters written by participants in the American Civil War.

American Memory Project This link opens in a new window
Thousand of diaries. Enter search terms in "Search all collections" box on upper right of main screen. Sample terms: diaries women; diaries soldier; diaries travel

Delia Locke Diaries (1855 to 1879)
Documentation of 19th century life in rural northern California. Daily happenings of family and community life are recorded, including the activities of church and temperance organizations.
Documenting the American South
from Duke University. Includes diaries and letters.
Historic Iowa Children's Diaries Digital Collection
Mainly late 19th century diaries (some early 20th century entries) of girls and a few boys. To see transcriptions, in View box (screen left) choose "page and text" from drop-dowm menu and click Go.
Japanese American Relocation Archives (1940s)
Scroll down page for links to diaries and and other primary sources including scrapbooks, and oral histories.
Valley of the Shadow
Details life in Augusta County, Va. and Franklin County, Pa. during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Contains letters, diaries, newspapers, speeches, census records and church records.

More Digital Diary Resources - including Men's Narratives

See also the Scout Report's many links to full-text personal narratives and diaries covering a wide range of persons and events in U.S. and world history from the 18th-20th century.

Camping With the Sioux: Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher
Fall 1881 diary of an unmarried woman of 43 who went to the Dakota Territory to live with Sioux women and record their way of life. From the Smithsonian Institution.
Diaries of Jackson Davis 1911 and 1913
A Virginia native, throughout his career Davis specialized in Southern education and interracial problems. See also microform version of Davis diaries for 1937-1947 (Micfilm 7542).
Early American Imprints 1801-1819 (UVA only)
See Autobiogaphies, Diaries, Memoirs, Slave narratives, Travel literature.
John Quincy Adams Diaries (1779-1848)
U.S. President 1825-1828. The diary can be searched by date or by using the detailed timeline. Because there is no transcription of the diary, it is not possible to search the text by keyword.
Mormon Missionary Diaries (1830s-1960s )
Browse by geographical area, diarist, or mission.
Pursuit of Adventure: The Fur Trade in Canada and the North West Company
Click on "Manuscripts", then "Browse by Title" (and use drop-down menu in the browse title search) to find links to journals written by members of the North West Company in the early 19th century.
Radio Diaries: 15 Years of Stories
From National Public Radio (NPR). Radio Diaries was a project to work with people to document their own lives for public radio: teenagers, seniors, prison inmates, civil rights diaries and and other diaries from people whose voices are rarely heard.
Wisconsin Pioneer Experience
A digital collection of diaries, letters, reminiscences, speeches and other writings of people who settled and built Wisconsin during the 19th century. Includes naratives from an Oneida Indian and a man who helped a slave on the underground railroad.

Diary Ebooks

The library provides many more diary-related ebooks than are listed here. These ebooks represent online versions of print titles listed below.

Civil war diaries and personal narratives, 1960-1994 : a selected bibliography of books in the general collections of the Library of Congress
Diaries of girls and women: a midwestern American sampler
Late nineteenth-century American diary literature
New England diaries, 1602-1800: a descriptive catalogue of diaries, orderly books and sea journals
VIRGO Search for Diary Ebooks
Try this search to see up-to-date holdings of all diary ebooks that UVA Library offers.

Diaries in Microform

The following is a list of microforms available. If you have questions about finding or using microfilm, stop by the 3rd floor Government Information Desk in Shannon Library.

American women's diaries. New England
Has annotated print guide. 21 reels.
American women's diaries. Southern women
Has annotated print guide. 34 reels.
History of women
Has print and online guide. 1,248 reels.
Records of ante-bellum southern plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War
Series A-N with printed and online guides. Many diaries are contained in this huge collection.
Southern women and their families in the 19th century, papers and diaries
Has print and online guide. 338 reels.
See also various personal papers held in microform at UVA
These materials (not a single collection) includes papers of Eleanor Roosevelt, Lydia Maria Child, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and Lugenia Burns Hope.

More Diaries in Microform - including Men's Narratives

Diaries of Jackson Davis 1937-1947
A Virginia native, throughout his career Davis specialized in Southern education and interracial problems. 3 reels. Micfilm 7542. See also online diaries for 1911 and 1913.
Travels in the Confederate States
Includes many personal accounts of camp, battle and prison experience from Confederate and Union soldiers. Miccard 3.
Travels in the old South
Covers the period 1527-1860. Miccard 4.
Travels in the new South
Miccard 2.
Columbia University oral history collection

Print Compilations with Diary Excerpts

Covered wagon women : diaries & letters from the western trails, 1840-1890
11 volumes. Also available online through North American Women's Letters and Diaries (see link within "Digital diary resources," above).
Best of Covered wagon women
This edited volume takes eight of the best essays from Covered Wagon Women and compiles them into a single volume.
A Day at a time: the diary literature of American women from 1764 to the present
Diaries of girls and women: a midwestern American sampler
Also available as an ebook (see "Ebooks," above).
First white women over the Rockies: diaries, letters, and biographical sketches of the six women of the Oregon Mission who made the overland journey in 1836 and 1838
3 volumes. Also available online through North American Women's Letters and Diaries (see link within "Digital diary resources," above).
Hardship and hope: Missouri women writing about their lives, 1820-1920
Ho for California!: Women's overland diaries from the Huntington Library
Also available online through North American Women's Letters and Diaries (see link within "Digital diary resources," above).
Overland in 1846: diaries and letters of the California-Oregon Trail
2 volumes. Also available online through North American Women's Letters and Diaries (see link within "Digital diary resources," above).
Private pages: diaries of American women, 1830s-1970s
A treasury of the world's great diaries
Women's diaries of the westward journey

Print Essays about Diaries (with diary excerpts): American Diaries

American diary literature, 1620-1799
Early nineteenth-century American diary literature
Late nineteenth-century American diary literature
Also available online (see "Ebooks," above).

Print Essays about Diaries (with diary excerpts): Foreign Diaries

Bibliographies: Finding Aids for Published Diaries: General Works

And so to bed : a bibliography of diaries published in English

Bibliographies: Finding Aids for Published Diaries: American Diaries

Bibliographies: Finding Aids for Published Diaries: Foreign Diaries

Bibliographies: Finding Aids for Published Diaries: Women's Diaries

American Women's Letters and Diaries: A Bibliography
Annotated bibliography of published women's diaries
(Auto)Biographies, Memoirs, Journal Writings, Personal Narratives
From Black American Feminism: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography University of California at Santa Barbara
British women's diaries : a descriptive bibliography of selected nineteenth-century women's manuscript diaries
Personal writings by women to 1900 : a bibliography of American and British writers
The published diaries and letters of American women : an annotated bibliography
Through a woman's I : an annotated bibliography of American women's autobiographical writings, 1946-1976
Women and the British empire : an annotated guide to sources

N.B.

The Diary Research guide was originally compiled by Jared Loewenstein in 1998. Updated by Gary Treadway in 2005. Updated by Anne Benham in May 2009. Updated by Jennifer Huck in November 2013.

Primary Sources about Women