Oh, What a Loansome Time I Had: The Civil War Letters of Major William Morel Moxley, Eighteenth Alabama Infantry, and Emily Beck Moxley. Edited by Thomas W. Cutrer.

Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, (2002). Octavo, red boards (hardcover), gilt letters, xii + 182 pp. Fine in a Fine dust jacket. From dust jacket: Most surviving correspondence of the Civil War period was written by members of a literate, elite class; few collections exist in which a woman’s letters to her soldier husband have been preserved. Here, in the exchange between William and Emily Moxley, a working-class farm couple from Coffee County, Alabama, we see vividly an often-neglected aspect of the Civil War experience: the hardships of civillian life on the home front. To supplement this revealing correspondence, the editor has provided ample documentation and research; a genealogical chart of the Moxley family; detailed maps of Alabama and Florida that allow the reader to trace the progress of Major Moxley’s division; and thorough footnotes to document and elucidate events and people mentioned in the letters. Readers interested in the Civil War and Alabama history will find these letters immensely appealing, while scholars of 19th-century domestic life will find much of value in Emily Moxley’s rare descriptions of her homefront experiences. (Inventory #: 50450bd)