This dataset is a selection of 54 contributions to the ‘Dagboek Corona’ (Corona Diary) collection, assembled by the Dutch public historian and freelance journalist José Boon ( https://dagboekcorona.nl/ ). Dagboek Corona is an ongoing project, comprising an online collection of 78 diary writings (in Dutch) from about 20 different authors, written in the period between 3 March and 9 May 2021. On the website, contributions have been categorized in four chronological periods, from the threat of corona (March 2020) until the end of the first wave in The Netherlands, around may 2020. A selection of 54 contributions, mostly textual with an occasional image, has been made accessible for this research in the form of a set of Word documents. 24 texts from professional authors are not included in this selection because they have been published elsewhere first and copyright does not allow further dissemination. The 54 contributions included in our dataset have been anonymized (replacing person names with aliases).