Mr. or Mrs. Williams has passed relatively recently.

Mr. if Mrs. was already gone. Mrs. if Mr. crossed over first. Mrs. first name was Jenny and she taught in the English Department at State. She was probably there all, or most of here entire career, which I think was fairly long.

The OC to Am Lit had the invoice inside the cover. Mississippi State hasn’t been State College since 1958, but the re-naming of the town it’s in, and its zip code, came much later. I can’t find when this happened but if 4/72 on the invoice is April 1972, it must have been after that.

The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States— that I also picked up this morning at the charity thrift store, has “Jenny Williams” and “1994” on the inside cover. I also have what I take to be Jenny’s Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations (1991). I see from the invoice I missed the Oxford Classical Dictionary. I’ll go back and see if I can find it.

The covers are all in bad shape, but the crappy old books themselves look as if they’ve barely been opened. Maybe Jenny was more of a teacher than researcher.

Cannot confirm any of this and must admit that it’s more likely it was Jerry not Jenny, though the handwriting doesn’t look very masculine.

Enough silliness. Seriously, is anyone aware of a story told though the eyes of an old book? The pride of being a new book, held in the hands of its first reader. The shame of a tattered old forgotten classic relegated to a box in the attic. Sort of Velveteen Rabbit-y.

More crappy old books for my Old Books about Old Books research center. One can never have too many books about books.