First World War Collections

From different perspectives, these include letters, diaries and other sources:

• Indian voices of the Great War : soldiers' letters 1914-18
• Soldier's tales : two Palestinian Jewish soldiers in the Ottoman Army during the First World War
• Nels Anderson's World War I diary 
• Wartime letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915-1919
• George Desvallieries, Correspondance 1914-1918 : une famille d'artistes pendant la guerre
• The Wipers Times : the complete series of the famous wartime trench newspaper

Examples include:

• Dorothea's War
• A war nurse's diary : sketches from a Belgian field hospital
• A nurse at the front : the Great War diaries of Sister Edith Appleton
• Medicine and duty: the World War I memoir of Captain Harold W. McGill, Medical Officer, 31st Battalion, C.E.F.
• A Chaplain at Gallipoli
• Militärseelsorge im ersten Weltkrieg : das Kriegstagebuch des katholischen Feldgeistlichen Benedict Kreutz 
• Echoes of the Great War : the diary of the Reverend Andrew Clark, 1914-1919
• Ebinger Kriegschronik : die Aufzeichnungen von Landpfarrer Johann Wölfel (1863-1929)

Examples include accounts from people living across Europe and the US:

• Echoes of the Great War : the diary of the Reverend Andrew Clark, 1914-1919 (UK)
• The Conscientious Objector's Wife : letters between Frank and Lucy Sunderland, 1916-1919
• Journal de la Guerre 1914-1918 (France)
• War on the home front : the farm diaries of Daniel MacMillan, 1914-1927 (Canada)
• "Mutters Kriegstagebuch" : die Aufzeichnungen der Antonia Helming 1914-1922 (Germany)
• See blog post on civilian life in Belgian during the war: Narratives of Occupation: Belgium 1914-1918

A range of sources including lists of teachers and former pupils who served or were killed in the war; descriptive accounts within school diaries, journals and histories; and information about the creation of war memorials.

For further information see the blog post on this subject: 

‘Business as usual’: School life in Britain during the Great War

Some examples include:

• History of St. Peter’s School, York : A.D. 627 to the present day
• A History of Kibworth Beauchamp Grammar School
• Book of the Blackheath High School
• Records, 1909-1922, of the Ramsgate County School for Boys now known as Chatham House School

Including editions of letters, diaries and memoirs of national and local politicians:

• Asquith, Memories and reflections, 1852-1927
• Clemenceau, Articles et discours de guerre, 1914-1918
• Killerton, Camborne and Westminster : the political correspondence of Sir Francis and Lady Acland, 1910-1929
• The Hoover-Wilson wartime correspondence
• The man who ran London during the Great War
• Kommunalpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg : die Tagebücher Erich Koch-Wesers 1914 bis 1918

Examples include:

• British documents on the origins of the war, 1898-1914
• Documents diplomatiques secrets russes 1914-1917
• Guglielmo Imperiali, Diario
• Ottoman diplomatic documents on the origins of World War One

Naturally there is much about the War throughout the parliamentary sources, including the journals and debates, petitions, reports of committees, and commissions and Acts of Parliament. 

• For further information on the Parliamentary sources, see our guide to UK Parliamentary history in the collections.
• For further information about coverage of life on the Home Front see the blog post on this subject: Parliamentary sources during the First World War.

Online newspaper collections (onsite only), fully searchable:

• The Times
• 19th Century British Library Newspapers
• 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
   
• Whitaker's Almanack
• The Wipers Times : the complete series of the famous wartime trench newspaper

Contact us if you would like help on finding or using our collections, or if you have any comments or suggestions about the content of this guide. We are happy to help.

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Examples include:

• Parliamentary sources, see the related blog post.
• Dear girl : the diaries and letters of two working women (1897-1917)
• The letters of Lytton Strachey
• Ich kann nicht durch Morden mein Leben erhalten : Briefwechsel zwischen Käte und Hermann Duncker 1915 bis 1917
• The Conscientious Objector's Wife : letters between Frank and Lucy Sunderland, 1916-1919

Examples include:

• Parliamentary sources
• Newspapers
• School records
• Dear girl : the diaries and letters of two working women (1897-1917)

This theme comes up across the parliamentary sources, personal narratives, newspapers and school records.

This theme comes up across the parliamentary sources, personal narratives, newspapers and school records.