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New in paperback Letters by Lamplight A Woman's View of Everyday Life in South Texas, 1873–1883 by Lois E. Myers |
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New in paperback Letters by Lamplight A Woman's View of Everyday Life in South Texas, 1873–1883 by Lois E. Myers |
"I am writing by lamp light now & Clinton is out feeding the hogs it is dim twilight out of doors but with the hogs squeeling him whistling & all the chickens at a half dozen houses crowing it sounds like bright daylight."In 1880, when Anna Wellington Stoner wrote those words to her mother, she was merely describing a typical evening at her rural home. But reading them now, more than one hundred years later, we can come to appreciate what everyday life was like for a young wife and mother living in South Texas. Myers explores the responses of one family to the rapid social and economic transitions in post-Reconstruction Texas, and her analysis helps us understand that the very act of writing those letters was, in a way, shaping history.The ten years spanned by the exchange of letters between Anna and her mother and brother included her schooling in Victoria County, her marriage to William Clinton Stoner, six moves to new houses and new frontiers in Edwards and Uvalde counties, three pregnancies and births, and the deaths of both her brother and her husband.
The details of these events, gleaned through meticulous research and reading of more than eighty-six letters, teach us what life was really like in this part of the Old West, from a feminine perspective. They remind us, as Myers points out, that "broad historical events, including the settlement of the American West, are made up of myriad ordinary lives, male and female, for whom the basic concerns of everyday life are of primary importance."
With beautiful sketches by A. Kay Jacobs to help complete our picture of this time and place, Letters by Lamplight is an important addition to the study of women's history.
LOIS E. MYERS is Associate Director of the Baylor Institute for Oral History and Secretary of the Texas Oral History Association.
Letters by Lamplight
ISBN 0-918954-69-X paper $14.956x9. 240 pp. 4 b&w photos. 6 line drawings. 4 maps. Bib. Index.
Women's Studies. Texas History.Publication Date: February 1999.
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