Abstract: The general relationships among total vertical stress, effective vertical stress, pore water pressure, void ratio and settlement in 1D large strain consolidation of soft clay are presented. By making the assumptions on soil compressibility and permeability, an equation governing 1D nonlinear large strain consolidation in terms of excess pore water pressure is derived in Lagrangian coordinate and the corresponding analytical solution obtained. The behavior of 1D nonlinear large strain consolidation is then discussed and compared with conventional small strain consolidation theory. The analytical solution is valuable for the verifications of many other numerical solutions to the large strain consolidation problems. 