Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online

Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online is a collection of primary sources from six separate databases (see below). It includes correspondence, autobiographies, interviews, and diaries in English written over the course of more than four centuries. It provides personal accounts by men and women from all walks of life of personal as well as historical events. There is extensive indexing that includes, for example, date, place, race and occupation, as well as personal event and historical event. Once you have retrieved a document within one of the six constituent databases, you can search further within that database using the menu bar above the document or continue to search in all six databases using the menu bar at the top.

Help is available from the menu bar at the top of each screen.

1558 to 2005.

The database is complete.

Letters, diaries, autobiographies, and oral histories.

• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
• Black Thought and Culture
• British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
• Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial Times to 1950
• Oral History Online

Mostly HTML full text; occasionally audio files or videos.

Most of the material is from published sources. Search the to locate print editions owned by the Rutgers University Libraries.

History: British Isles; History: North America