People

By Guy D. Garcia

Time was in Texas when a man of letters meant a guy who was on the track and football varsities. But two years ago H. Ross Perot gave Texas education a kick in the pants by leading the drive for the controversial no-pass, no-play rule for student athletes. Now he has given Texas letters an incalculable shot in the arm by presenting the University of Texas at Austin with a rare early English literary collection of 1,105 volumes and 250 manuscript groups. Included are first editions of Donne, Milton and Shakespeare, as well as the first book ever printed in English, Raoul Le Fevre's The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. In the largest such sale ever, Perot, 55, paid $15 million to obtain the books from the private Pforzheimer collection in New York City, and the university is planning a fund-raising drive to repay him. The collection "fascinates me," said Perot. "Printing presses and books changed the world and immeasurably improved the status of the ordinary man."