In Collecting Shakespeare, Stephen H. Grant recounts the American
success story of Henry and Emily Folger of Brooklyn, a couple who
were devoted to each other, in love with Shakespeare, and bitten by
the collecting bug. Shortly after marrying in 1885, the Folgers
started buying, cataloging, and storing all manner of items about
Shakespeare and his era. Emily earned a master's degree in
Shakespeare studies. The frugal couple worked passionately as a
tight-knit team during the Gilded Age, financing their hobby with
the fortune Henry earned as president of Standard Oil Company of
New York, where he was a trusted associate of John D. Rockefeller
Sr. While a number of American universities offered to house the
collection, the Folgers wanted to give it to the American people.
Afraid the price of antiquarian books would soar if their names
were revealed, they secretly acquired prime real estate on Capitol
Hill near the Library of Congress. They commissioned the design and
construction of an elegant building with a reading room, public
exhibition hall, and the Elizabethan Theatre. The Folger
Shakespeare Library was dedicated on the Bard's birthday, April 23,
1932. The library houses 82 First Folios, 275,000 books, and 60,000
manuscripts. It welcomes more than 100,000 visitors a year and
provides professors, scholars, graduate students, and researchers
from around the world with access to the collections. It is also a
vibrant center in Washington, D.C., for cultural programs,
including theater, concerts, lectures, and poetry readings. The
library provided Grant with unprecedented access to the primary
sources within the Folger vault. He draws on interviews with
surviving Folger relatives and visits to 35 related archives in the
United States and in Britain to create a portrait of the remarkable
couple who ensured that Shakespeare would have a beautiful home in
America.
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