History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | personal sources

Marie Marten's letter

Using Personal Sources: Understanding women’s work in the First World War

Rhea Nana, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on a letter sent by Marie Martin, a nurse in the First World War, for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Rhea reveals how personal sources such as letters can be one of the only places to find certain insights into the emotions of those experiencing the war. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. When analysing wars, immediate connotations come with it, such as suffering, separation and bad conditions. These connotations are expressed in the letters written from Marie Martin, the daughter of […]

Continue Reading 0
letter from Catt to Schwimmer 1913

Using Personal Sources: Bonds of friendship in the women’s suffrage campaign

Hannah Moase, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on a letter sent by women’s suffrage campaigner Carrie Chapman Catt for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Hannah reveals how the letter provides us with an insight into the important bonds of friendship that existed between the suffrage campaigners of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. Carrie Chapman Catt is well known for the huge part she played in the women’s suffrage movement in America and other parts of the world due to her being one of […]

Continue Reading 0
emily blog

Using Personal Sources: Lost London; the memoirs of an East End detective

Emily Burgess, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on the memoirs of an East End detective, Sergeant B. Leeson, for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Emily discusses how we can use personal sources such as this to understand more about social anxieties at the time of their writing. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. Crime in the Victorian period has become significant through such cases as the Whitechapel murders. With the use of personal sources, those involved in the investigations into these murders can provide historians with an individual and […]

Continue Reading 2
Image taken from https://ferrisjabr.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/jane_austen_coloured_version_small1.jpg

Using Personal Sources: Jane Austen’s Letters

Eleanor Doyle, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on one of Jane Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. Eleanor discusses how we can use personal sources such as this to understand more about an author’s personal relationships as well as wider contemporary experiences. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. Jane Austen’s reputation as a celebrated English novelist is well established. However, her letters to her sister, Cassandra Austen, provide a rewarding insight into her as an individual. This blog will focus on a letter Jane sent to her […]

Continue Reading 1
The Valentine's Day love letter

Love, courtship and ‘personal sources’ in late medieval England

Dr Maria Cannon is a Lecturer in Early Modern History and specialises in late medieval and early modern family history. She co-ordinates the Level 5 core unit ‘Introduction to Historical Research’ where students are introduced to the range of historical sources available for their independent research and the kind of issues associated with using different types of evidence. In this blog she reflects on one of the examples discussed under the theme of ‘Personal Sources’. In February 1477 a young woman from a Norfolk gentry family wrote to the man she was engaged to marry. Margery Brews greeted her fiancé John as ‘my ryght welebeloued Voluntyne’, the earliest surviving use […]

Continue Reading 0