Women's Autobiographies on National Wars in the 19th Century

This bibliography focuses on women's autobiographies, diaries and memoirs (as well as a few letter connections). These authors participated in and/or lived through various, Western armed conflict and wrote about their experiences in English, French, German or Russian.

The most important wars included for this period are:

  • Mexican American War (1846–48)
  • European Civil Wars (1848–49)
  • Wars of Italian Independence (1848–49, 1859, 1866)
  • Crimean War (1853–56)
  • American Civil War (1861–65)
  • German Wars of Unifications (1864, 1866, 1870–71)
  • Russo-Japanese War (1904–05)

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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22
Bek, Anna, and Anne D. Rassweiler. The Life of a Russian Woman Doctor: A Siberian Memoir, 1869-1954. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Benton, Cora Beach, and Thomas R. Taber. Hard Breathing Days: The Civil War Letters of Cora Beach Benton. Albion, NY: Almeron Press, 2003.
Bradshaw, Wesley. Pauline of the Potomac, or, General McClellan's Spy. Philadelphia: Barclay & Co., 1862.
Clarke, Charles Francis, Mary Clarke, and Darlis A. Miller. Above a Common Soldier: Frank and Mary Clarke in the American West and the Civil War. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.
Clyman, Toby W., and Judith Vowles. Russia through Women's Eyes: Autobiographies from Tsarist Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
Corbusier, Fanny Dunbar, and Patricia Y. Stallard. Fanny Dunbar Corbusier: Recollections of her Army Life, 1869-1908. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Davis, Elizabeth. Betsy Cadwaladyr, A Balaclava Nurse: The Autobiography of Elizabeth Davis In Honno classics; Variation: Honno classics. South Glamorgan, Wales: Hanno, 2015.
Dawson, Sarah Morgan, and Charles East. Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Duberly, Frances Isabella L., and Christine Kelly. Mrs. Duberly's War: Journal and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Dunant, Henry. A Memory of Solferino. Washington, D.C.: American National Red Cross, 1862.
Eaton, Harriet, and Jane E. Schultz. This Birth Place of Souls: The Civil War Nursing Diary of Harriet Eaton. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Kollontai, Alexandra. The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman. New York: Herder and Herder, 1971.
Luddy, Maria. The Crimean Journals of the Sisters of Mercy, 1854-56. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004.
McDonald, Cornelia Peake, and Minrose Gwin. A Woman's Civil War: a Diary with Reminiscences of the War from March 1862. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.
Pember, Phoebe Yates. A Southern Woman's Story In American Civil War classics; Variation: American Civil War classics. London: G. W. Carleton & Co., 1879.
Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. London: James Blackwood, 1857.
Williams, Timothy, and Evan Kutzler. Prison Pens: Gender, Memory, and Imprisonment in the Writings of Mollie Scollay and Wash Nelson, 1863-1866. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2018.