The disenfranchised women of past eras are no longer stifled into silence. A work in progress, North American Women's Letters and Diaries offers 28,000 pages of searchable text consisting of 200 women's diaries and letters that has reached chronologically the 1920s. The publisher intends to span 300 years of writing that will comprise 150,000 pages and an extensive annotated source bibliography. The key to North American Women's Letters and Diaries's user friendliness is PhiloLogic software, which allows browsing and perusal of full text. The attractive introductory page offers choices of author, source, year, and personal or historical events. Unlike databases rushed to market before their machinery was ready, North American Women's Letters and Diaries flicks rapidly to selection pages set in clear, readable type. The software gives access to religion, occupation, age, nationality, race, and personal background. Browsing is assisted by, e.g., a neat chart of authors, biographical data, number and type of writings, and full-text documents. A succinct, illuminating life of Mary Boykin Chesnut, the most famous Civil War diarist, is salted with phrases from her own hand, and readers can move directly to her Diary from Dixie,(1905). North American Women's Letters and Diaries cleverly anticipates what, where, why, and how users get at information. For example, a search for "seamstress" names an example and shows the major aspects of life span, biography, and text; a keyword search by "baker" produces 15 hits that users can sort by lines, author, source, and year. Each of the 15 shows the search word highlighted in a three- to four-line context with title and page number highlighted in red. At the bottom are full bibliographic citations and repetitions of title, biography, and source. The Help page outlines the minutiae of research problems. This site allows users to visit women long dead and relive their history and ambitions. All collections.

--- M. E. Snodgrass, independent scholar