The custodial history of this holding is incomplete. As of June 2019, no record of how or when the Monmouth University Library acquired this item has been found.

Evidence suggests, however, that Charles Kenneth Eves, (1888-1964), a professor of English literature at City College in New York and a former resident of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, was the "Kenneth" to whom "Bill"'s correspondence is addressed and the husband of this acquisiton's probable donor.

The Monmouth University Library holdings include a first-print edition of Orville Prescott's autobiography, The Five Dollar Gold Piece : The Development of a Point of View, which was presented to the repository by Mrs. Charles K. [Lavinia Bonner] Eves [1893-1966]. The item is inscribed (by the book's author?--in a hand identical to the signature that appears at the bottom of Bill's letter) "for Lavinia and Kenneth who helped and deserve a better book. Love, Bill." Bill's correspondence to Kenneth closes with a similar sentiment: "Best to you and Lavinia."

In addition, the borrowed book that is cited in the opening sentence of Bill's letter is Daniel Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier, a title that Kenneth/Eves likely owned. The obituary for Charles Kenneth Eves published in the New York Times on August 13, 1964 notes that, at the time of his death, Eves "was working on a definitive biography of the novelist Daniel De Foe [sic]."