"Richard W. Corbin served with the Army of Northern Virginia for only the last nine months of its existence. His letters describing Confederate service made a book of fewer than one hundred pages in the original edition, and more than one-fourth of that volume covered Corbin's interesting and arduous trip from Europe to Virginia. Despite the author's relatively short tenure with the army, and the slender extent of the resultant book, Corbin's Letters of a Confederate Officer to His Family in Europe During the Last Year of the War of Secession stands out as an important item in Confederate bibliographical annals for several reasons. It is one of the meager handful of Confederate books published in France; the only published Army of Northern Virginia account by a French emigrant (albeit of Virginian blood); among the half-dozen rarest Army of Northern Virginia books; the most important single source for the curiously unrecorded military career of General Charles W. Field; and, in my admittedly subjective judgment, the best written and most literate book by any Confederate." Robert K. Krick

"Unfortunately rare, this book includes the candid letters of a member of Major General C. W. Field's staff, who described interesting details of operations North of the James subsequent to June, 1864." Douglas Southall Freeman, excerpt from the select bibliography of Lee's Lieutenants