Written by an independent scholar, this book combines biography of Henry and Emily Folger with an account of their foundation of the Folger Shakespeare Library, a public library and theatre in Washington D.C. dedicated to Shakespeare, and now internationally recognized. The Folgers' story is unusual because collectors with the skills to gather the best and most valued work in a field (Emily Folger had a graduate degree in Shakespeare studies) and the money to afford to buy it (Henry Folger was a Standard Oil executive in the Gilded Age), usually kept the work in private collections or donated it to universities. The Folgers decided their collection should be a public institution with potential access to everyone. The author touches on several of their contemporaries who founded similar institutions (the Huntington library, museum, and gardens, the Isabella Stuart Gardner museum), but this highly detailed book will be mainly of interest to students of Gilded Age philanthropy and readers with a close interest in the Folgers. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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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