One important source for the study of St Helena are the numerous accounts of the island left by travellers since the time of its discovery.  Amongst important early accounts are those by Thomas Cavendish, Peter Mundy, Thomas Herbert, William Dampier, Charles Lockyer, and C.F. Noble.  The first monograph about St Helena was published in Amsterdam in 1652, entitled Klare Besgryving Van't Eyland Sanct Helena.  Further descriptive monographs were published in the early nineteenth century, the two most notable being A Description of the Island of St. Helena (London, 1805) and A Geographical and Historical Account of the Island of St. Helena (New York, 1815), both written anonymously.  The two outstanding monographs of the mid-nineteenth century are Joseph Lockwood's A Guide to St Helena: Descriptive and Historical (St Helena, 1851) and Saint Helena by 'A Bird of Passage' (London 1865).  The two most important travelogues of more recent times are Oswell Blakeston's Isle of St. Helena (London, 1957) and Margaret Stewart Taylor's St. Helena: Ocean Roadhouse (London, 1969).  There is also an extensive section on St Helena in Lawrence Green's There's a Secret Hid Away (Cape Town, 1956).

Fascinating as all these accounts are, the richest and most fascinating source on St Helena are the island's voluminous official and unofficial archival records.  A good general introduction to these records, both on and off the island, is G. C. Kitching's 'Records of the Island of St Helena', published in the American Archivist in 1947, which provides an outline of the holdings of the three principal repositories of St Helena records, namely, the St Helena Government Archives, the British Library and the Public Record Office.  A fairly comprehensive listing of holdings at United Kingdom and foreign repositories can also be found in Brian Smith's recently published A Guide to the Manuscript Sources for the History of St Helena (Todmorden, 1995).

The St Helena Government Archives were established in 1962, following a visit by an adviser from the Public Record Office, and are situated at The Castle in Jamestown, alongside the government's main administrative offices.  The archives consist chiefly of records of both the East India Company and the Crown administration.  The East India Company's records date from 1673 to 1836 and include local 'consultations', books of letters to and from England, judicial, military, maritime and other administrative records.  There are several registers of wills (1682 - 1839) and of leases and deeds (1682 - 1849).  The records of the island's Crown administration date back to 1836 and consist of council records, correspondence between the governor and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the island's Blue Books, and other miscellaneous administrative records.  Some government departments have small archives of their own.  Most records in this category are subject to a 30-year access rule.

The archives also hold copies of St Helena's various weekly newspapers, the first of which, the St. Helena Advocate, was published in 1851 (a monthly gazette was first published in 1806), and which were particularly prolific during the Victorian period, including a number of short-lived satirical magazines.  Amongst the more notable papers were the St. Helena Herald (1853 - 1860) and the St. Helena Guardian (1861 - 1923), the longest running of all.  Further printed sources include the St Helena [Diocesan] Magazine (1901 - 1951), and the St. Helena "Wirebird" (1955 - 1966).  A particularly valuable mine of information are the St. Helena Calendar and Directory, published between 1829 (?) and 1842, and its successor, the St. Helena Almanac and Annual Register, published between 1842 and 1883, with a further one-off issue published in 1913.

An invaluable source for family historians are the island's Anglican parish registers, dating back to 1680, which are held on loan by the Government Archives.  In recent decades these registers have been extensively indexed.  Also available are the island's Baptist registers.  In addition, the Jamestown Public Library holds an extensive reference collection of books on St Helena and its dependencies.  The St Helena Heritage Society, founded in 1980, maintains a small public museum and tries to raise awareness of the island's history amongst both islanders and visitors.  One very important result of research undertaken on the island itself, is that it encourages better care of the records that are used.  There is still a great need on St Helena for better archival facilities, including a laminating machine, as well as for computerised cataloguing and indexing facilities.  Likewise there is a need for the preservation of important local sources now in private hands, including the records of St Helena businesses.

Archives and libraries in the United Kingdom preserve duplicates of most materials available on St Helena itself, as well as number of very early manuscript sources not found locally.  Between them, the British Library and the Public Record Office provide as much material on St Helena as any local historian could wish for.  Holdings at the British Library include the East India Company's records in the Oriental and India Office Collections.  Other valuable collections are housed at the Rhodes House Library in Oxford and at Cambridge University Library.