European History
Primary Sources in Books
Primary sources can be published in books. Use the main search in Library Search and include search terms personal narratives, sources, diaries, memoirs, papers, speeches, documents, or letters.
Personal narratives is a term assigned by librarians and is used for first person accounts.
Diaries and memoirs are terms used by writers and editors to describe their document. These are also normally in the first person.
Autobiography is often assigned to diaries and memoirs.
Letters and correspondence are published correspondence and occasionally include both outgoing and incoming letters.
Papers include correspondence, speeches and other previously unpublished items by the author.
Speeches were written to be spoken and have often been published.
Sources is another term assigned by librarians and often includes all of the types of documents listed above as well as government records.
Primary Sources on the Internet
- Gale Primary Sources
This collection allows for searching across three primary source collections:
Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940, Part I; Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century: Far-Right and Left Political Groups in the US, Europe, and Australia; and American Historical Periodicals (series 1-5).Contents: Newsletters, papers, propaganda, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, periodicals, and other primary source materials.
- HathiTrust Digital Library
This digital collection offers access to digitized resources from libraries around the world.
Contents: Full-text ebooks and articles.
- EurodocsConnect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated.
- European History Primary SourcesThe purpose of EHPS is to provide an easily searchable index of scholarly digital repositories that contain primary sources for the history of Europe.
- The European LibraryFrozen at the end of 2016, this resource contains access to newspapers and other digital facsimiles.
- Europeana CollectionsEuropeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitized items – books, music, artworks and more.
Sample Primary Sources in Books
Feudal Society in Medieval France: Documents from the County of Champagne by ISBN: 9780812214413Publication Date: 1993Theodore Evergates has assembled, translated, and annotated some two hundred documents from the country of Champagne into a sourcebook that focuses on the political, economic, and legal workings of a feudal society, uncovering the details of private life and social history that are embedded in the official records.
Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia: Select Documents, 1772–1914 by ISBN: 9781584653028Publication Date: 2013This book makes accessible--for the first time in English--declassified archival documents from the former Soviet Union, rabbinic sources, and previously untranslated memoirs, illuminating everyday Jewish life as the site of interaction and negotiation among and between neighbors, society, and the Russian state, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to World War I. Focusing on religion, family, health, sexuality, work, and politics, these documents provide an intimate portrait of the rich diversity of Jewish life.
The Beagle Letters by Call Number: QH31.D2 A4 2008Publication Date: 2008-09-04Charles Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle is a gripping adventure story, and a turning point in the making of the modern world. Brought together here in chronological order, the letters he wrote and received during his trip provide a first-hand account of a voyage of discovery that was as much personal as intellectual.
The Essential Thirty Years War: a documentary history by Call Number: General Stacks D251 .E88 2015ISBN: 9781624663499Publication Date: 2015This abridgment of Tryntje Helfferich's 2009 anthology The Thirty Years War features an expanded General Introduction and annotation designed to support student readings in swift-moving surveys of European and World history.
