The chapter is concerned with ego documents, that is sources like autobiographies, diaries and letters, as a data source for historians of the English language. First, the term ego documents is defined and its merits for historical sociolinguistic research are outlined. Thereafter, literacy and education opportunities, and the availability of and approaches to ego documents, are traced from the later Middle Ages to the Modern English period, followed by an illustration of language use across social layers, and a comparison to another contemporary text type. A particular focus is put on ego documents as a source of vernacular speech, for example as data for varieties of English for which there is no other contemporary documentation. The examples given illustrate the sometimes more speech-like and informal nature of ego documents and highlight the value of the text category for historical linguistics.

The third chapter utilizes soldiers’ writings to indicate that, contrary to the developers’ view of the gas mask as a life-saving device, combatants were more frequently frightened of both the appearance of the gas mask on others and the physical feeling of the mask against their own skin. While German tacticians hoped to craft chemically resistant soldiers through gas mask training, these newly envisioned “chemical subjects” continued to ruminate on the many ways in which masks could malfunction. Sitting in the trenches, soldiers largely feared both the uncoordinated and creeping nature of gas and the smothering feeling of their affixed gas mask. By examining the sensorial and metaphorical language in a wide array of soldier diaries, trench journals, and troop reports, this chapter seeks to construct the emotive experience of German World War I soldiers as they came to recognize their precarious role in a modern world now seemingly steeped in gas.