Diaries and Letters in the Library Stacks: Women

One of the leading intellectuals of first-wave feminism, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was a prolific socialist writer and lecturer. This representative selection from Gilman's diaries includes entries written between January 1879 and March 1935.

Letters from young girls who left their homes to work in factories and mills examine their economic concerns, the work they were doing, and their friends and social lives.

Daughters of a black slaveholder father, Anne Hart Gilbert and Elizabeth Hart Thwaites were among the first educators of slaves and free African Caribbeans in late 18th and early 19th century Antigua.

Reflects the experiences of five different women, on three of the major westward routes in the middle of nineteenth century - across Panama in 1849, the California or northern route in the 1850s, and the Gila or southern trail in the post-Civil War period.

Great Britain, 1873-1943

While Nella's younger son joined the army, the rest of the family adapted to the transformed rhythms of life in Barrow-in-Furness, which suffered terribly from enemy bombing raids.

Picking up where 'Nella Last's War' left off, this moving and often comic diary tells the story of her post-war struggles and describes what ordinary people felt during those years of privation, hope and rebuilding.

An ordinary woman rising to meet extraordinary challenges in nineteenth-century Georgia.

The colonel's lady spent most of her life at army outposts on the nineteenth-century western frontier, where she faced the problems of raising a large family while fulfilling the duties of a commanding officer's wife.