Access is available on and off campus to current McMaster University students, faculty and staff.
The largest collection of women's diaries and correspondence ever assembled, spanning more than 300 years, and bringing the personal experiences of some 1,325 women to researchers, students, and general readers.
Subjects include what women wore, the conditions under which they worked, what they ate, what they read, and how they amused themselves; how frequently they attended church, how they viewed their connection to God, and how they prayed; their relationships with lovers, family and friends.
Contains 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from Colonial times to 1950, more than 6,000 pages of previously unpublished materials, drawn from more than 600 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, and 300 biographies. All age groups, life stages, and ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous are represented.