30+ FREE Books: Women’s Historical Diaries

This is the third of several posts linking to various public domain books on interesting topics! Public domain books are ones that have fallen out of copyright, and so they’re available for free to download and read.

This specific post focuses on the following:

• Diaries turned into books, specifically memoirs and autobiographies
• Written by women, or collected from their personal diaries
• Books available through the amazing website Project Gutenberg, my favorite public domain book resource

Be sure to also check out 101+ FREE Books About Women Traveling the World for more books!

I’ve put this list together myself (no AI!!) by going through many (MANY) pages of books on the “diaries” keyword pages. I even hand-coded the links myself! My hope is that putting these lists together will help you discover some new-to-you books and authors you might not’ve seen before, and that you’ll find some interesting books to read.

Each link goes to the book’s main page on the Project Gutenberg website. To download a copy for yourself, select the format you’d like and it should download to your device.

Note: Some links here are affiliate links, which means if you click on it and buy something, I get a small percentage. This money goes towards running the blog. Thank you for your support!

Book List

1. The journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland (1791-1811) Volume 1 (of 2) and Vol. 2 (1908)
2. Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation: 1838-1839 by Fanny Kemble (1863)
3. Diary of Anna Green Winslow, a Boston School Girl of 1771 (1894)
4. The Diary of a Girl in France in 1821 by Mary Browne (1918)
5. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Dorothy Wordsworth and Vol. 2 (1897)
6. George Eliot’s Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 1 (of 3) and Vol. 2, Vol. 3
7. The Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay — Volume 1 by Fanny Burney and Vol. 2, Vol. 3 (1892)
8. The Letters of Jane Austen by Jane Austen (1908)
9. The diary of a Russian lady: reminiscences of Barbara Doukhovskoy (née princesse Galitzine) (1917)
10. Village Life in America 1852-1872, Including the Period of the American Civil War As Told in the Diary of a School-Girl by Caroline Cowles Richards (1908)
11. A Diary from Dixie by Mary Boykin Chesnut (1906)
12. A Confederate Girl’s Diary by Sarah Morgan Dawson (1913)
13. Lady John Russell: A Memoir with Selections from Her Diaries and Correspondence (1910)
14. Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan by Izumi Shikibu et al. (1920)
15. The Cruise of the “Janet Nichol” Among the South Sea Islands: A Diary by Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson (1914)
16. A Diary Kept by Mrs. R. C. Germon, at Lucknow, Between the Months of May and December, 1857 (1870)
17. A Journal of the Disasters in Affghanistan, 1841-2 by Florentia Wynch Sale (1843)
18. South African Memories by Lady Sarah Isabella Augusta Wilson (1909)
19. The Cape and the Kaffirs: A Diary of Five Years’ Residence in Kaffirland by Harriet Ward (1853?)
20. Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 by Anonymous (1915)
21. Leaves From the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, From 1848 to 1861 by Victoria, Queen of Great Britain (1868)
22. The Girlhood of Queen Victoria, Vol. 1 (of 2): A Selection from Her Majesty’s Diaries (1912) (vol. 2 not yet available)
23. The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart by Opal Stanley Whiteley (1920)
24. Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum by Mary Huestis Pengilly (1885)
25. A Diary Kept by Mrs. R. C. Germon, at Lucknow, Between the Months of May and December, 1857 by Maria Germon (1870)
26. The Journal of Countess Françoise Krasinska, Great Grandmother of Victor Emmanuel (1895)
27. A Woman’s Wartime Journal by Dolly Sumner Lunt (1918)
28. My American Diary by Clare Sheridan (1922)
29. An outlaw’s diary: the Commune by Cécile Tormay (1923)
30. A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, by Eliza Southall (1869)
31. My Arctic journal: a year among ice-fields and Eskimos by Josephine Diebitsch Peary (1894)
32. A Journey to Ohio in 1810, as Recorded in the Journal of Margaret Van Horn Dwight (1912)
33. Two diaries From Middle St. John’s, Berkeley, South Carolina, February-May, 1865 by Miss Susan R. Jervey, Miss Charlotte St. J. Ravenel, and Mrs. (Waring) Henagan (1921)
34. My Diary in Serbia: April 1, 1915-Nov. 1, 1915 by Monica M. Stanley (1916)