The library has acquired a significant rare volume in order to honor former Library Director Frances H. Thompson.
            Mrs. Frances H. Thompson was the library director at South Texas College of Law from 1966 to 1987, and during that time oversaw the growth of the library from 18,000 to 250,000 volumes, as well as the growth of the staff from one person (Mrs. Thompson herself) to eleven persons.  Mrs. Thompson retired in 1987 after running the South Texas Law Library for twenty-one years.  Mrs. Thompson died on January 17, 2006 in Houston.  She was a devout Anglophile, and thus the library chose to honor her by purchasing a rare book selected for its importance to English legal history.
            The book was authored by John Selden, and is entitled Uxor Ebraica.  It is a second edition (1673) of a work originally published in 1646, and is written in Latin and concerns Jewish marriage and divorce laws.  John Selden (1584-1654) was one of the leading minds of England in his day, and is considered the first scientific English legal historian.  In fact, the English legal history society is named the Selden Society in his honor.
            Selden was also a noted Orientalist in his time, and his book Uxor Ebraica, as well as several others Selden wrote on Hebrew law, are noted in recent scholarship as being important in fostering religious toleration of Jews in England during the 17th century.
            There are only fourteen known copies of the first edition of this work in existence, with none in Texas.  There are thirty-five known copies of the second edition, and besides the Fred Parks Law Library, the only other copy in Texas is at the University of Texas School of Law Tarlton Law Library.  This work will now reside in the Special Collections Department with nine other rare volumes authored by Selden.