Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Essex County Museum and Historical Society will host a reading of love poems at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 9.

Marty Glenn Taylor will read selections from “I, Ever Yours, And You, Forever Mine: Forty-Five Years of Love,” a collection of poems Poet Laureate of Virginia Thomas Lomax Hunter III wrote to his wife, Marie, every Valentine’s Day from 1903 to 1948.

Taylor, a longtime Essex County resident, compiled and edited the book. Sandra Hunter Lear Orton, granddaughter of Thomas and Marie Hunter, kept the treasured album of her grandfather’s poems. When Taylor and Orton met, they decided that this would be a perfect Valentine’s Day gift for anyone in love.

In a collaborative effort, the poems were selected. They then engaged the talents of book designer Bev Nelson whose contribution complemented the artistry of the poetry.

Hunter (1875-1948) wrote a column “As It Appears to the Cavalier” for the King George County newspaper in the 1940s. H...