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The first biography of Henry and Emily Folger, who acquired the
largest and finest collection of Shakespeare in the world. In
Collecting Shakespeare, Stephen H. Grant recounts the American
success story of Henry and Emily Folger. 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 on April 23, 1932. The library houses 82 First Folios,
277,000 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, DC, for
cultural programs, including theater, concerts, lectures, and
poetry readings. With unprecedented access to the primary sources
within the Folger vault, Grant 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.
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.
This is the first biography of Capt. Peter Strickland, a
little-known Connecticut Yankee who crossed the Atlantic 100 times
in command of a sailing vessel, traded with French and Portuguese
colonies during the period 1864-1905, and served as the first
American consul to French West Africa for over 20 years. We know
about Peter Strickland's long life (1837-1921) because he wrote a
daily journal from the age of 19 until the year he died. He broke
away from a long line of Connecticut farmers to adopt a seafaring
life at the age of 15. Capt. Strickland's merchant marine career
led him from the east coast of the United States to the west coast
of Africa. He introduced American tobacco and wood products into
French and Portuguese colonies and on the return trips carried
animal hides and peanuts in his 100-ton schooners. He wrote and
published a book on behalf of sailors. The most knowledgeable
American in the African trade for 40 years, Strickland struggled to
maintain an American competitive edge among the dominant commercial
presence of French trading houses from Bordeaux and Marseilles. The
U.S. State Department asked him to become the first consul in
French West Africa, with residence in Senegal. The captain accepted
the terms: he would receive no salary, but he could keep the port
fees he collected and continue to practice his import-export
business. Living on the former slave island of Gore, Strickland
battled epidemics of cholera and yellow fever. He suffered from
malaria and catarrh. His 23-year-old son George accidentally
drowned off the coast of Dakar, Senegal. Demoralized and ill,
Strickland retired to Boston in 1905 and became a gentleman farmer.
At age 77, he recopied his entirejournal into bound volumes.
What do the men and women of America's diplomatic corps do? William
D. Morgan and Charles Stuart Kennedy, themselves career diplomats,
culled over 1400 oral interviews with their Foreign Service peers
to present forty excerpts covering events from the 1920s to the
1990s. Insiders recount what happens when a consul spies on Nazi
Germany, Mao Tse-Tung drops by for a chat, the Cold War begins with
the Berlin blockade, the Marshall Plan rescues Europe, Sukarno
moves Indonesia into the communist camp, Khrushchev calls President
Kennedy an SOB, and our ambassador is murdered in Kabul. consular
officers talk about the beginnings of Kremlinology, predicting a
coup in Ecuador, Hemingway and the embassy in Havana, the secret
formulation of the NATO treaty, Jerusalem after the British and the
US recognition of Israel, fighting in the Congo over Katangan
secession, dealing with an alcoholic foreign president, human
rights work in Paraguay, the U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran, the
bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, helping families of the Pan
Am 103 victims, Greece and Turkey at odds over a tiny island,
embassy roles in Riyadh and Tel Aviv during Desert Storm, and many
more.
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