Alexander Street’s Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society brings together 100,000 pages of the personal writings of women of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, displayed as high-quality images of the original manuscripts, extensively indexed and online for the first time.
The letters and diaries reveal, in each woman’s own hand, the details of the authors’ daily lives, their activities and concerns, and their attitudes towards the people and world around them. The collection is drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.
CONTENT
Spanning 1750 to 1950, the database is particularly strong in nineteenth-century material. Highlights include:
The letters of Annie Sullivan detailing her teaching of Helen Keller, written to Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School of the Blind
One hundred letters written by Ellen Tucker Emerson, eldest daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson, describing life in Concord during the Civil War
The papers of Abby Kelley Foster, noted women’s rights advocate and abolitionist, depicting the activities of the antislavery movement in New England, New York, and Ohio.
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