Between 1842 and 1890, 23 American women published 33 memoirs of their experiences as patients in insane asylums. Through these memoirs, in a time inhospitable to them as public speakers, these 23 women enacted one of the first mental health patient’s rights movements. The memoirs are long out of print, and accessing them has involved effort and time commitment: over four years’ time, they were collected from research libraries, online databases, historical societies, medical libraries, and the Library of Congress.
Browse the Insane Asylum memoirs, 1842-1890 Collections
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Hospitals for the Insane. Viewed from the Standpoint of Personal Experience, by a Recovered Patient
From Alienist and Neurologist, 9: 51-57
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The Travels and Experience of Miss Phebe B. Davis of Barnard, Windsor County, Vt: Being a Sequel to Her Two Years and Three Months in the N.Y. State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, N.Y.1860
Syracuse, NY: J.G.K. Truair, stereotypers and printers
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The exposure on board the Atlantic & Pacific car of emancipation for the slaves of old Columbia, engineered by the lightning express; or, Christianity & Calvinism compared. With an appeal to the government to emancipate the slaves of the marriage union1864"The exposure on board the Atlantic & Pacific car of emancipation for the slaves of old Columbia, engineered by the lightning express; or, Christianity & Calvinism compared. With an appeal to the government to emancipate the slaves of the marriage union. Volume I. Ed. by a slave, now imprisoned in Jacksonville insane asylum, placed there by her husband for thinking" Chicago, Published by the Authoress |