What historical primary source books are available for purchase online?

by Feanors_8th_son

So, I like having books. Even books I don't really ever intend on reading. There's just something deeply satisfying about seeing them on my shelves.

But that's besides the point.

Yesterday, I was watching a YouTube channel called History Time, and he kept referencing a book called Karoli Magni which is apparently a contemporary biography of Charlemagne. I thought, "Well that's cool. I should buy it".

So I did.

Then I thought, what other primary source history books are there? I should go ask people on r/AskHistorians tomorrow.

I'll be honest, I'm not even too particular about the subject matter. Greeks & Romans? Awesome. Ancient Jews? Even better (I do already have some Josephus). Persians, Chinese, Vikings, Brits, Arabs, Holy Roman Empire.... I'm game to hear about / buy it all.

I'm just kind of in love with the idea of collecting a bunch of books that are 500+ years old. It's an amazing privilege to live in a time when we can even consider doing this, and I'd like to take advantage.

Thank you so, so, so much.

JosephRohrbach

It depends if you want originals or not, to some extent! You'll be harder-pressed to get something pre-19th c. than not, obviously. Assuming you just want any printing of a normal historical primary source, though, there are a lot of good options. Here are a few book series (and individual books) I'd recommend.

  • The I Tatti Renaissance Library publishes bi/trilingual editions of books from the Italian Renaissance. They're very pretty, but more importantly(!) they're universally very high-quality critical editions for a very low price, at least relative to other academic critical editions. You can enjoy these for below £30 each, which isn't bad at all for hardbacks. I would especially recommend Lives of the Milanese Tyrants.
  • Also from Harvard is the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, which I like even more. It spans a wider geographical and cultural breadth, so you can get books in anything from Old English to mediaeval Greek. Again very pretty, and again remarkably cheap. I would recommend Attaleiates' The History, which includes an eyewitness account of the crucial battle of Mantzikert.
  • The final Harvard series - I promise! - is the Murty Classical Library of India, which contains a number of primary histories of an absolutely incredible linguistic and cultural breadth. I'm afraid my extremely rudimentary Hindi and lack of knowledge about the subcontinent's history means I haven't read anything from this (yet) and can't recommend anything, though.
  • The Camden Series is an outstanding - and extremely long-running, dating back to the early 19th century - series of critical editions of documents relating to British history, from histories to tax registers. Getting your hands on individual books can be a bit of a pain though. I'd recommend nosing in and finding something in your period, honestly, but if pushed, I liked Swedish diplomats at Cromwell’s court, 1655–1656: the missions of Peter Julius Coyet and Christer Bonde a lot. Watch out, though, as not all of these come with translations!
  • Another older one is the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae,^(1) which, as the fancy Latin name suggests, publishes critical editions of texts from Eastern Roman history. Again I'm not super well-acquainted with these, though I'd recommend The Taktika of Leo VI, simply because it's fun.

Sadly, that's as much as I can do off the top of my head. Hope this is what you were looking for and, if so, it helped!

^(1) This is not the only site where you can get these, but I couldn't be bothered to fiddle around. The other parts of the series can be googled.

Kelpie-Cat

My favourite primary source is easily available as a Penguin Classic, The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon. It's a completely absorbing, funny, and poetic autobiographical account of life at the court of Empress Teishi in Japan in the 10th century, written by one of her ladies-in-waiting.