Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger by Stephen H. Grant (review)

Stay, and let there be no bloody question whether Stephen Grant’s second critical work, Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, has garnered permanent shelf space and digital cataloguing by the famous library in Washington, D.C. (rather than across the pond in London), that holds 82 First Folios, 275,000 books, 60,000 manuscripts and hundreds of valuable artwork related to the playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and his time. Located on Capitol Hill, the library was built and paid for from the bulk of Henry C. Folger’s fortune, left in a trust and naming his alma mater, Amherst, as perpetual administrator (the college’s trustees were surprised by the announcement when Henry died). The library is a national historic landmark, designed by Paul Philippe Cret (1876–1945), who also designed the Pan American Union in Washington and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The Folgers envisioned the library for showcasing the dramatist and poet’s art and preserving his genius, and thus, with it named after Shakespeare and themselves, the futurist-minded couple set down their own legacy, too. Three hundred years after Shakespeare lived and more than a century ago from our time, the Folgers, seemingly full partners in marriage and collecting, went about acquiring nearly everything of, by, and for England’s great bard – measure for measure and as they liked it. The couple obviously took to heart Ben Jonson’s dedicatory remarks in the First Folio what Shakespeare left us: “He was not of an age, but for all time!” Grant’s book explains how the exacting and persistent Folgers worked to make sure of that.

Their endgame, of course, became the permanent housing of their private collection in the national library the two sited and willed as a lasting gift to the American people. To make the occasion truly Shakespearean, prosaic and appropriate, the library was officially dedicated in dramatic fashion on Shakespeare’s ascribed birthday and deathday, April 23rd. Many representatives of America’s wealthy and elite, politicians, and scholars were present including President Herbert Hoover and First Lady Lou Henry Hoover (she was a noted scholar and linguist). Sadly though, one luminary was absent: Henry Folger, who had passed away in June 1930. Nonetheless, if the past 400-plus years of reading, studying, and performing Shakespeare were not enough, the Folgers’ actions sincerely added to the scholarly and popular interest in Shakespeare and his works in the United States and of mythical proportion around the world.

Grant is a senior fellow at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and previously authored the biography, Peter Strickland: New London Shipmaster, Boston Merchant, First Consul to Senegal (New Academia, 2006). Of note, like Henry Folger, Grant, is also Amherst alum. Laden with history about the Folger Library, interesting facts and cameos encapsulating the Folgers’ lives and networks, and anecdotes about history’s most celebrated author, Grant’s book offers a treasure trove to the researcher’s obvious targeted audience of historians, scholars, readers, and performers of Shakespeare.

Attuned to effective marketing and successful sales, Grant’s 244-page book was published in hardcover and released by John Hopkins University Press in February of 2014 to herald Shakespeare’s spring birthday and coincide with the 450th anniversary of his birth year. Hence, the book respectably documents the lives of the husband-wife duo that collected the mass of rare Shakespearean materials (now worth millions of dollars) and founded the Folger Shakespeare Library, which opened to the public in 1932. In the tradition of Elizabethan theatre, Grant offers both a prologue and epilogue to his work, along with acknowledgements, an appendix of directors for the Folger, notes, bibliography and index. Adding to its archival durability and scholarly aspect yet popular reading interest, the book includes dozens of black and white photographs, drawings, and tables, most of them portraits of the Folgers, of Shakespeare and other persons connected with the library, and depicting the elegant Elizabethan...