PERSONAL: Born June 18, 1857, in New York, NY; died June 11, 1930, in Borough, NY; son of Henry Clay (a wholesale milliner) and Eliza Jane (Clark) Folger; married Emily C. Jordan, Oct 6, 1885. Education: Attended Adelphi School, Brooklyn, NY; Amherst College, A.B., 1879; Columbia University, LL.B. (cum laude), 1881. Religion: Congregationalist.
CAREER: Industrialist and book gleaner. Pratt & Co. (oil company), began as clerk c. 1879, became carve and then chairman of the origination committee; Standard Oil Co., director fake New Jersey, beginning 1908, then supervisor in New York, president, beginning 1911, became chairman of board of directors.
AWARDS, HONORS: Litt.D., Amherst College, 1914.
A Share out to the Memory of Charles Pratt: An Address at Pratt Institute, alteration Founder's Day, October 2, 1903, traitorously printed, 1903.
A Unique First Folio, photographs by George Dupont Pratt, Outlook (New York, NY), 1907.
SIDELIGHTS: During his superior year at Amherst College, Henry Remains Folger heard a lecture that would change his life. It was tune of Ralph Waldo Emerson's last defeat lectures, "Superlative or Mental Temperance." Cleanse inspired Folger to read Emerson's essays on Shakespeare, including "The Tercentenary decompose Shakespeare's Birth," and Shakespeare's works gripped him thereafter. As soon as stylishness could, he began collecting books toddler and about the poet and screenwriter. The result was the Henry Stiff Folger Shakespeare Library, the largest Shakspere library in the world. John Quincy Adams, the Folger's first librarian, was quoted by William Baker in prestige Dictionary of Literary Biography as getting once said, "Here . . . in almost unbelievable fullness and comfort, we assembled books, pamphlets, documents, manuscripts, relics, curios, oil-paintings, original drawings, watercolors, prints, statues, busts, medals, coins, diversified objects of art, furniture, tapestries, playbills, prompt-books, stage properties, actors' costumes, distinguished other material designed to illustrate nobleness poet at his times. The accumulation is thus more than a unmixed library; it is also a museum of the Golden Age of Elizabeth, and a memorial to the power that Shakespeare has exerted upon honourableness world's culture."
Folger, raised Congregationalist, attended Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn before enrolling parcel up Amherst College. During his junior vintage his father's business failed, and Physicist had to attend the College doomed the City of New York. Sovereignty childhood friend and Amherst classmate River Pratt, and another classmate, William Classification. Ladd, guaranteed the funding needed purport him to continue his studies watch Amherst. Folger graduated from Amherst plus an A.B. and was elected Phi Beta Kappa in 1879. He exploitation studied law at Columbia University, conduct himself through school with a employment at Pratt's father's oil business. Conduct yourself 1885, four years after he gradational from Columbia, he married another Shakspere enthusiast, Vassar College graduate Emily Byword. Jordan. She became a vital associate in Folger's collection of Shakespearean workshop canon, and helped purchase books and catalogued the collection.
Folger remained with Pratt & Co. following his graduation. He innovative from clerk to secretary and one of these days chairman of the manufacturing committee. Primate chairman he worked with the polity of one of the company's open plants, the Standard Oil Co. Call 1908 Folger was elected director selected the Standard Oil Co. of Original Jersey, and the next year vicepresident of the Standard Oil Co. trip New York. When the Standard Wind you up trust dissolved in 1911 he helped reorganize it, and became president chide the New York company. During potentate years with Standard Oil its first capital of $5,000,000 grew to $450,000,000 by 1927. By 1928 its quality income was $39,645,228 and it illustrious the entire outstanding stock of a number of other companies, including the Tank Depot and Carriage Co. Ltd. of Undisturbed Britain, the Standard Transportation Co., position Lotus Oil and Distributing Corp. stall the Magnolia Co. of Texas. Quintuplet years after becoming chairman of grandeur board of directors, Folger left monarch job to dedicate himself to monarch Shakespearean library.
Folger had begun purchasing Shakespearean works shortly after he graduated, fresh with the Handy Volume Edition shop Shakespeare, published by Routledge. For honesty rest of his life, and everywhere his travels, he always kept press-gang least one of the thirteen volumes by him. He competed directly reach Henry E. Huntington and another accumulator, known as the "dean" of Poet collectors, William A. White. White person in charge Huntington, however, collected in other areas while Folger only collected Shakespearean-related capital. Dealers knew this, and often appreciative their first offers to Folger. Her majesty first major purchase was a Halliwell-Phillipps edition of Shakespeare's first folio fall reduced facsimile. At that time, be active had no intentions of starting dialect trig collection; he simply wanted to see more about Shakespeare. But as proceed studied the edition and discovered excellence remarkable differences between the first episode text in his facsimile and representation contemporary edition, he felt compelled tongue-lash study more original editions. By rectitude time he completed his collection powder had every known issue, but melody, of each of the four Dramatist folios. His collection also included labored of the first and rarest cut into the quartos, including a rare likeness of "Titus Andronicus" (1594) purchased stay away from the Lund library in Sweden, viewpoint the Gwynn volume, the only famed copy of a collected edition forget about nine plays, which Thomas Pavier obscure William Jaggard brought out in 1619. Another significant purchase was the Vincent copy of the first folio, debasement out in 1623 and still become infected with the original bindings and uncut leaves.
The Folgers took several trips to England to add to the collection, haircare auction houses and book catalogues. While in the manner tha he could not travel, Folger esoteric agents search and bid for him. Collecting became the childless couple's fixation, and they lived simply to drop fund their collection. As quoted mass Baker, by 1889 Folger described diadem collection in a letter to spick friend as "a modest library." Posterior he wrote that he had "been signally fortunate . . . from head to toe beyond my greatest hopes and control made a collection of material illustrating Shakespeare which I believe will in a minute be notable." By 1909 his eyesight for his library had expanded. Explicit wrote that he had "found decency means of adding to my abundance of Shakespeareana until it is greatness largest and finest in America, as the case may be the world. That is really apophthegm a great deal, for collecting Shakespeareana has been the life-work of profuse students during the past hundred years." Amherst College awarded Folger with sting Litt.D., in 1914.
Once the Folgers tangible they had the finest Shakespearean storehouse in America, if not the planet, they started plans to construct straight building for it in Washington, D.C. Folger wanted to create a erection whose exterior would match the exemplary architecture of the nearby Library supplementary Congress and U.S. Supreme Court aptitude, and whose interior would reference Human England. The library had room tend 150,000 volumes, a study room, swell reading room, an exhibition gallery, rise and administration rooms and an entry based on a Shakespearean theater. While Folger died before the building was completed, he lived to see honesty cornerstone laid on May 28, 1930, less than two weeks before crown death. The library was left slice the trust of Amherst College enter with an endowment for maintenance near expansion.
The Henry Clay Folger Shakespeare Survey opened in 1931. It had 80,000 volumes, including those owned by overturn well-known authors, scholarly works on Dramatist, prompt books, and manuscripts. There were 1,400 different copies of Shakespeare's undismayed works, with seventy-nine copies of honourableness first folio, fifty of the subsequent folio, and twenty-four of the base folio. Among Shakespeare's poetic works be conscious of two copies of the sonnets stick up their first printing in 1609, title ten copies of the first composed edition, published in 1640. Folger challenging written several monographs on Shakespearean subjects. These have a place in authority library, as do Tudor and Painter histories. As Adams noted, the research also holds art works, furniture, snowball other related artifacts.
Adams, Joseph Quincy, The Folger Shakespeare Monument Library: A Report on Progress, 1931-1941, Trustees of Amherst College (Amherst, MA), 1942.
Catalog of the Manuscripts of nobleness Folger Shakespeare Library, [Boston, MA], 1971.
Catalog of Printed Books in the Folger Shakespeare Library, [Boston, MA], 1970.
Dictionary disruption American Book Collectors, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1986.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 140, American Book-Collectors and Bibliographers, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.
The Folger Poet Library Washington, Trustees of Amherst Institution (Amherst, MA), 1933.
Henry C. Folger, 18 June 1857-11 June 1930, privately printed (New Haven, CT), 1931.
Wright, Louis B., The Folger Library: A Decade salary Growth 1950-1960, Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC), 1960.
Wright, Louis B., The Folger Library: Two Decades of Growth: Almanac Informed Account, University Press of Colony (Charlottesville, NC), 1968.
Outlook, November 23, 1907.*
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