Stephen H. Grant. Collecting Shakespeare

Stephen H. Grant’s carefully researched new biography of New York City Shakespeare collectors Henry and Emily Folger provides a window into the discreet world of bibliophiles and rare book collectors during the Gilded Age. From the 1880s through the 1930s, the Folgers amassed one of the largest collections of works by and related to William Shakespeare, eventually building the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., making the collection available to the public. Grant has combed through the couple’s papers in the Folger Library to reconstruct in intricate detail both their collecting habits and personal foibles. At once extremely private—they saw family only once a year at reserved and carefully orchestrated holiday gatherings—and fiercely competitive, the Folgers emerge as paradoxically prim early Victorians. Although a president of Standard Oil and his wife surely occupied the center of New York’s capitalist world of wealth and exuberance, the pair as portrayed by Grant looks more like an acetic rural New England couple.

Art · Art history · Biography · Gilded Age · Media studies · Performance art · Political science · Sociology · Wife · Chinese history and philosophy · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies