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Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger
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.
244 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 30, 2018
Grant succeeds in crafting a superbly documented biography of Henry and Emily Folger which paints a vivid portrait of their passion for assembling and housing the finest Shakespeare collection in the world. He includes enough detail to satisfy the curious but lets this story of selfless philanthropy unfold over 40 years. So many fascinating small stories of book collecting, the rivalry with Henry Huntington, their devotion to curating their collection, the decision to place the collection in Washington D.C and the incredible collaboration between husband and wife for the same goal. The greatest irony is that Henry didn't live to see his collection gathered in one place or even the placing of the cornerstone for the library. Emily is the ultimate heroine in the four years after Henry's untimely death when she provides needed funding and leadership to see their life's worth culminate in the national treasure that is the Folger Shakespeare Library.
June 24, 2014
At times wordy and capable of getting lost in small details, Collecting Shakespeare is nonetheless a good recounting of the passion of Emily and Henry Folger for Shakespeare. The summary of the history of the library after its founders' deaths also provided a good look at the way a research library adapted and changed with the changing technologies and times of the 20th century.
May 3, 2016
This was an okay book about really interesting people (even the people who were only in a few paragraphs managed to be fascinating). However, the organization was a little lacking; the book itself did not have much of a narrative.
August 23, 2022
This work of non-fiction tells the story of a marriage, a lifelong hobby, and the history behind a one of a kind library. When two lifelong intellectuals married in 1885, they began buying and storing early works of Shakespeare. The frugal couple spent decades and thousands of hours researching, studying, cataloging, and purchasing early works. Their final grand ambition was to construct a library to house their collection on Capitol Hill near the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, Henry died without seeing the library built. But he left behind 92,000 volumes and a wife who dedicated her final years to ensuring their life project came to fruition. Today, the library houses 82 First Folios and 275,000 books and has over 100,000 visitors each year, a true testament to the passion of the Folgers.
Henry Folger descended from a relatively prominent family. Benjamin Franklin's mother was a Folger. And Henry's uncle started the Folger coffee company. After graduating from Amherst College, he began working at Standard Oil Company of New York and eventually became a high ranking executive and worked closely with John D. Rockefeller Sr. Yet his salary and frugal lifestyle was not enough to support his book collecting pursuits. He invested and frequently took out loans to buy particular books. He was also quite secretive about his book buying activity, in attempts to keep his identity and hopefully the price of books down. His wife Emily was similarly, if not more, academically minded. She graduated from Vassar College and also received a Master's Degree in Shakespeare studies during a time period when almost no women had advanced degrees. The couple never had children but building their book collection was a totally absorbing mutual interest that seemed to take the place of offspring.
It is difficult to fully comprehend the amount of time and money the couple devoted to their Shakespeare collection. Folger "maintained correspondence with "a prodigious army of booksellers: six hundred in all, one hundred fifty in London alone" (110). Once the couple decided on a location for their planned library, it took nearly nine years of patient real estate acquisition to acquire the nine rowhouses that previously sat on the plot of land where the library now stands. The couple never gave interviews or allowed access to the books. maintaining that secrecy was their best defense in continuing to acquire the best volumes and preferred to wait until they could be presented in the final library.
The last couple chapters of the book deal mostly with details of the construction and management of the library, which all took place after Henry Folger's death. It was moving to see how determined Emily was to continue to support and fund the project even after her husband passed away. The Folgers' work and dedication created an incomparable collection that is a huge resource for scholars and historians alike, as well as a priceless treasure housed in the nation's capitol. The couple were notoriously secretive, which likely made details scarce but I do wish more had been shared about their marriage. For instance, no details were provided about how they met or their courtship. Overall a fascinating book and an interesting insight into what is now a collection that is available to scholars and visitors from around the world.
Henry Folger descended from a relatively prominent family. Benjamin Franklin's mother was a Folger. And Henry's uncle started the Folger coffee company. After graduating from Amherst College, he began working at Standard Oil Company of New York and eventually became a high ranking executive and worked closely with John D. Rockefeller Sr. Yet his salary and frugal lifestyle was not enough to support his book collecting pursuits. He invested and frequently took out loans to buy particular books. He was also quite secretive about his book buying activity, in attempts to keep his identity and hopefully the price of books down. His wife Emily was similarly, if not more, academically minded. She graduated from Vassar College and also received a Master's Degree in Shakespeare studies during a time period when almost no women had advanced degrees. The couple never had children but building their book collection was a totally absorbing mutual interest that seemed to take the place of offspring.
It is difficult to fully comprehend the amount of time and money the couple devoted to their Shakespeare collection. Folger "maintained correspondence with "a prodigious army of booksellers: six hundred in all, one hundred fifty in London alone" (110). Once the couple decided on a location for their planned library, it took nearly nine years of patient real estate acquisition to acquire the nine rowhouses that previously sat on the plot of land where the library now stands. The couple never gave interviews or allowed access to the books. maintaining that secrecy was their best defense in continuing to acquire the best volumes and preferred to wait until they could be presented in the final library.
The last couple chapters of the book deal mostly with details of the construction and management of the library, which all took place after Henry Folger's death. It was moving to see how determined Emily was to continue to support and fund the project even after her husband passed away. The Folgers' work and dedication created an incomparable collection that is a huge resource for scholars and historians alike, as well as a priceless treasure housed in the nation's capitol. The couple were notoriously secretive, which likely made details scarce but I do wish more had been shared about their marriage. For instance, no details were provided about how they met or their courtship. Overall a fascinating book and an interesting insight into what is now a collection that is available to scholars and visitors from around the world.
October 22, 2018
Reading this book felt like going through an old drawer containing a handful of interesting diary notes interspersed with thousands of dry-cleaning tickets and grocery receipts. There was an occasional engrossing anecdote about what Henry or Emily personally thought about specific works of the Bard, but most of the text involves slogging through the byzantine acquisition and financing of the Folgers' Shakespeare collection. It made me wonder who was the target audience for this work. Yes, undoubtedly the Folgers amassed the premier collection of Shakespeare artifacts in the world, a great boon to scholarship worldwide. But this is not aimed at scholars, as the material itself takes back seat to the business and bibliophilic ephemera of the Folgers' life. Perhaps it was written for hoarders seeking justification for their own obsession. Its organization is puzzling. It is not ordered chronologically, but by topic. Furthermore, each chapter seems to jump around in time back and forth, which makes constructing a compelling narrative about any aspect of the Folgers' life a chore for the reader. I sadly must say that on the whole, the book was a disappointment.
November 18, 2019
Extremely interesting book on the Folgers, Henry and Emily. His rise to wealth, his interest in Shakespeare, and his way of bidding to acquire his many collections of Shakespeare objects, books, signatures,folio, busts, so many objects. The people he wast building his collections with. The architects of the Library in Washington.
December 5, 2020
A great story about the backstory of the creation of a premier collection of books and the hard work and determination that went into this. It is interesting to think that, starting today, no one could replicate this collection since most of the material is already held by museums, libraries or similar institutions. The Folgers were alive in the Golden Age to be a collector.
September 18, 2024
Meticulously researched and densely written. Ideal for bibliophiles and fans of Shakespeare. If you are mostly interested in the Library, skip ahead to Chapter 9. The epilogue is jammed packed with decades of history that could easily fill another book of three.
September 28, 2025
An interesting read on a neat little library in Washington, D.C.!
February 6, 2016
Collecting Shakespeare is a book with promise, regrettably the book's focus proves frustrating for anyone whose central preoccupation is the library itself. There are parts of this book, however, that are endlessly fascinating. The final three chapters (the portion of the book that addresses and explores the creation of the library itself) are thoughtful and interesting. Prior to that, Collecting Shakespeare is the fetishized and too often implausible American Dream narrative run amok. By Grant's account, Folger was a bootstrap pulling autodidact who painfully amassed his collection of rare Shakespeariana over several decades while loyally serving John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. He was a prudent, responsible, thoughtful underling for one of America's first titans of industry. In addition, he strategically extricated himself from the less-than-ethical (at times, criminal) charges leveled against Rockefeller. All of this is to say, too often Collecting Shakespeare is about the man and his obsession rather than what his obsession created.
Emily Folger is not as present in Collecting Shakespeare as I would have anticipated. Remember, it was her husband's wealth and investment capital that allowed the Folgers to amass the collection of rare books that would eventually become the Folger Shakespeare Library. Grant attempts to illustrate how Emily Folger operated as a pivotal piece of her husband's bibliophilic endeavors by suggesting that she curated and investigated important rare books that Folger himself would inevitably purchase. Regrettably, too often she feels like Folger's underling, not unlike Folger to Rockefeller.
Near the close of Collecting Shakespeare, Grant ruminates over the symbolic significance of the Folger Shakespeare Library. While describing the library's dedication ceremony on April 23, 1932, he writes, "On the other side of the Atlantic from Stratford, a newly confident American culture was about to receive an emblematic gift expressing its arrival as Europe's equal in cultivation and respect for high culture" (177). The bombast notwithstanding, this idea succinctly encapsulates what this book could have been; a history of America arriving as a legitimate cultural signifier, represented by of all things a library for and about the work of William Shakespeare.
Emily Folger is not as present in Collecting Shakespeare as I would have anticipated. Remember, it was her husband's wealth and investment capital that allowed the Folgers to amass the collection of rare books that would eventually become the Folger Shakespeare Library. Grant attempts to illustrate how Emily Folger operated as a pivotal piece of her husband's bibliophilic endeavors by suggesting that she curated and investigated important rare books that Folger himself would inevitably purchase. Regrettably, too often she feels like Folger's underling, not unlike Folger to Rockefeller.
Near the close of Collecting Shakespeare, Grant ruminates over the symbolic significance of the Folger Shakespeare Library. While describing the library's dedication ceremony on April 23, 1932, he writes, "On the other side of the Atlantic from Stratford, a newly confident American culture was about to receive an emblematic gift expressing its arrival as Europe's equal in cultivation and respect for high culture" (177). The bombast notwithstanding, this idea succinctly encapsulates what this book could have been; a history of America arriving as a legitimate cultural signifier, represented by of all things a library for and about the work of William Shakespeare.
August 4, 2014
When the Folger Shakespeare Library opened in Washington D.C. in 1932 (on the Bard’s birthday) it housed an amazing number of First Folios, even more books and manuscripts, and even included an Elizabethan Theatre. All of this came together thanks to the tireless, almost obsessive collecting of an American couple – Henry and Emily Folger. The purchase, collection and storage of all sorts of items about Shakespeare and his era became the centre piece of their marriage, financed with the fortune Henry accumulated as president of the Standard Oil Company, where he worked with John D. Rockefeller Sr. In Collecting Shakespeare, Stephen H Grant recounts the story of this amazing couple, whose love for Shakespeare was only eclipsed by their love for one another…
I really wanted to like Collecting Shakespeare. A non-fiction book about book collecting at the turn of the century? Revolving around the collection of works about and by William Shakespeare? Collected by a man who lived and worked with one of the business moguls of the period? It seemed to be right up my alley. Unfortunately, it was a big disappointment. Stephen Grant lets the subject matter down with unexciting, ponderous prose, which leaches all of the fun out of what could have been an intriguing slice of turn of the century history. Considering the world of book collecting and the rivalries that Grant gets into, as well as Folger’s place in a world of oil and corruption that caused him to be brought up on charges more than once, this could have been great, exciting narrative history if in the hands of an Erik Larson or a Paul Collins. Unfortunately, in Collecting Shakespeare we get a simple, dry enumeration of events, one that at times follows a linear timeline and at other times jumps about in a more thematic view. This makes for a messy narrative that is not easy to follow. All in all, a disappointing treatment of an interesting subject. I gave Collecting Shakespeare 2 stars.
I really wanted to like Collecting Shakespeare. A non-fiction book about book collecting at the turn of the century? Revolving around the collection of works about and by William Shakespeare? Collected by a man who lived and worked with one of the business moguls of the period? It seemed to be right up my alley. Unfortunately, it was a big disappointment. Stephen Grant lets the subject matter down with unexciting, ponderous prose, which leaches all of the fun out of what could have been an intriguing slice of turn of the century history. Considering the world of book collecting and the rivalries that Grant gets into, as well as Folger’s place in a world of oil and corruption that caused him to be brought up on charges more than once, this could have been great, exciting narrative history if in the hands of an Erik Larson or a Paul Collins. Unfortunately, in Collecting Shakespeare we get a simple, dry enumeration of events, one that at times follows a linear timeline and at other times jumps about in a more thematic view. This makes for a messy narrative that is not easy to follow. All in all, a disappointing treatment of an interesting subject. I gave Collecting Shakespeare 2 stars.
December 21, 2017
This book detailed how one couple built the largest (?) library in the world dedicated to Shakespeare. Short story: one man got lucky with (a) school scholarships, (b) marrying a wife who shared his passion, (c) landing a modest paying job and living below his means, and (d) making very lucky stock market investments.
The long answer is this book, and it is well worth the read. From colleges in late 19th century New England to oil barons to the sometimes unscrupulous world of book collecting and Congress, Briggs not only details how the Folger Shakespeare Libary came to be, but offers us a peek into upper-middle class America at the turn of the last century.
The long answer is this book, and it is well worth the read. From colleges in late 19th century New England to oil barons to the sometimes unscrupulous world of book collecting and Congress, Briggs not only details how the Folger Shakespeare Libary came to be, but offers us a peek into upper-middle class America at the turn of the last century.
December 9, 2016
For the most part, this book was a compendium of facts which read as if the author was transcribing from his index cards (which he at times re-sorted to use in another section of the book). It would have been more compelling had he provided some insight and developed some of the statements he made.
February 4, 2015
Wonderful story of how the husband and wife devoted their lives and fortune to amassing a vast collection of Shakespeareana which became the core collection of the library they built in Washington, D.C.
April 28, 2014
Interesting history of the Folgers and their Shakespeare Library. A robber baron who gave something good to society. Among other fun facts: their ashes are there.
July 1, 2014
little too much about how Folger made his money for my interests, but I enjoyed the book. Very well researched.
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February 6, 2015026.82233 G763 2014
January 4, 2018
3.5 Stars
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews