The following subject guide should assist you in finding diaries in the Penn Library collections, published and unpublished personal writings at other libraries and archives, and books about diaries and personal writings as a genre.
Online. "An exhaustive annotated bibliography of the more than 930 books published in English between 1830 and 1940 that collect three or more women's biographies in narrative form, with a selection of all-female collective biographies published before 1830."