I enjoy undersized old books. Hardbacks slightly larger than a trade paperback. That kind of thing.

One of them is a copy of Cicero. In this translation, it is called The Offices, though it is more often called On Duties. This one is a particularly fortunate copy. Partly because the introduction is by the Romantic writer Thomas De Quincey, who famously wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eater (in the old days before the internet, I searched for months for a copy before finding a big old folio style one).

Secondly, within it was a small picture, like a school picture, on page 125. The young man, comicly identified as ‘PUBLIC ENEMY #1’ looks like an ordinary, handsome young man from the fifties (this edition was printed in 1949). The book is inscribed with the name ‘Katherine Laule’ (in truth, I am unsure about the last name). Was this young man her boyfriend? Her brother?