Skip to Main Content

Primary Sources: Autobiographies, Memoirs, Letters

This guide will explain what primary sources are and provide various tools and techniques for finding primary sources (such as autobiographies, letters, photographs and audio-visual materials).

Autobiographies, Memoirs, Letters

An autobiography is a personal account of a person's life written by that person whereas a biography is an account of a person's life written by someone else. Autobiographies are primary sources and biographies are secondary sources. Memoirs (or "memories") are autobiographies that reflect on a part of someone's life. Memoirs are usually written by politicians and military leaders. Letters are also primary sources.

Jump to:

Canada

United States

  • African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
    Digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers. A part of the Digital Schomburg, this collection provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920. Select the category "Biography and Autobiography".
  • Library of Congress Digital Collections
    A gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.
  • Documenting the American South
    Provides online access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes ten thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
  • Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives
    Documents the evacuation and relocation of nearly 122,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry on the west coast of the United States in 1942;includes oral histories; personal narratives, notes, and letters; government documents, publications, circulars, and reports; and other types of documents
  • North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
    Includes letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories of immigrants in Canada and the United States, 1840-present.
  • North American Slave Narratives
    Includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920.
  • North American Women's Letters & Diaries, Colonial to 1950
    Includes the experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters from 17th century to the 20th century.
  • Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
    Includes letters, diaries, speeches and other sources documenting the history of women in social movements in the U.S.

Great Britain and Ireland

  • British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
    Includes approximately 100,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from 1500 to 1900
  • Defining Gender
    A collection of various items written by men and women, including periodicals, letters, diaries and travel writing on politeness and conduct, domesticity and family, consumption and leisure, education and sensibility and the body from 1450 to 1910 in Britain and Europe.
  • Early English Books Online
    Full-text access to the roughly 100,000 books printed in England from 1475 until 1700.
  • Eighteenth Century Collection Online
    Allows full-text searching and presents images of original printed pages including all illustrations.
  • Empire Online
    A collection of various items including travel writing and diaries focusing on Empire Studies such as cultural contacts, literature, religion, race, class, imperialism and colonialism in continents that include North America, South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Caribbean and Australasia from 1492 to 2007.
  • Making of the Modern World 1450-1850
    A collection of books, serials, letters and memoirs on the study of early economics, politics, business and social history from 1450-1850.
  • Mass Observation Online
    The collection is comprised of file reports, books, digitized microfilm, diaries, directives and photographs on the social history of Britain in the 1930s and 1940s.

Europe

  • Defining Gender
    A collection of various items written by men and women, including periodicals, letters, diaries and travel writing on politeness and conduct, domesticity and family, consumption and leisure, education and sensibility and the body from 1450 to 1910 in Britain and Europe
  • Empire Online
    A collection of various items including travel writing and diaries focusing on Empire Studies such as cultural contacts, literature, religion, race, class, imperialism and colonialism in continents that include North America, South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Caribbean and Australasia from 1492 to 2007.
  • EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History
    Provided inks connect to Western European (mainly primary) historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated.
  • Making of the Modern World 1450-1850
    A collection of books, serials, letters and memoirs on the study of early economics, politics, business and social history from 1450-1850.
     

Latin America, Caribbean, Africa

  • Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment
    Contains over 1400 authors and over 100 000 pages of primary works: letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts as well as images of early encounters; including Caribbean, Central and South America.
  • Empire Online
    A collection of various items including travel writing and diaries focusing on Empire Studies such as cultural contacts, literature, religion, race, class, imperialism and colonialism in continents that include North America, South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Caribbean and Australasia from 1492 to 2007.
  • South African History Online
    Online encyclopedia of South African history and culture. Includes letters, speeches, public statements as well as prison letters written by Nelson Mandela