Published memoirs, letters, diaries, and collections of source documents can serve as primary sources, depending on your topic. Beyond these "first person accounts,"  books published at the time of your topic can reveal a great deal about the attitudes and assumptions of the time.

Try to add terms such as "sources," "personal narratives," "memoirs," or "correspondence" to your search terms to locate published sources.

HathiTrust is a digitization project created by a consortium of research libraries.