Life Writing

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Collection held at Brunel University Library; online collection coming soon, hosted by LJMU

Research Centre at University College London focusing on period 1500-1800 and including material and resources on autobiography, biography and letters

A new collection for preservation of diaries. Already over 2000 can be read at Bishopsgate Library; searchable database under construction. Nice blog.

Includes Database of British and Irish Labouring-Class Poets and some short biographical sketches

Interactive resource created by Chetham’s Library and History students at Manchester Metropolitan University exploring home, family, and Manchester life through the diaries of middle-class Victorian family

Introduction to a major social documentary movement, begun in 1930s and continuing today, that uses diarists and social observers to record everyday life

Subscription-only resource accessible through many university libraries, including LJMU; based on Mass Observations documentary and diary projects from 1930s and 1940s.

Includes biographical sketches or authors, transcripts of their writings, and includes memoir and poetry

This subscription-based collection includes ‘People’s History: Working Class Autobiographies From the British Library, London’. Many university libraries, including LJMU, hold the earlier microfilm edition of these 174 autobiographies covering the period 1792-1920. Some of these memoirs are freely available online (see Autobiographies Online).

Coming soon: voices from the 1980s drawn from Mass Observation Project, British Library Oral History Project and material from University of Sussex Library.

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