I am currently engaged in a fascinating research and writing project: the first biography of Emily (1858–1936)
and Henry (1857–1930) Folger, founders of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. Above all, it’s a
love story––love between the two, and of Shakespeare by the two. I came to write my second biography due to a
surprise. A curator’s tour of the Folger Library whetted my appetite to read about the man who had risen to the very
top in two endeavors: presiding over the Standard Oil Company of New York and assembling the greatest collection of Shakespeariana
in the world. When I asked the curator, she confessed that no such volume had been produced.
Emily had intended to
write a biography of her book-collector husband in 1931 and submit the manuscript to Houghton Mifflin Co., where, ironically,
my father had started as a salesman the same year and later become CEO. I discovered this personal connection only by
sifting through eighty boxes of family archives in the Folger Library vaults. Unfortunately Emily’s book never advanced
beyond the outline.
The first Folger to come to America in 1635 hailed from Norwich, England. Peter Folger’s
tenth child, Abiah, married Boston soap maker Josiah Franklin. They named their son Benjamin. Henry was the nephew of James
Folger who founded Folgers Coffee in San Francisco, after finding no gold in the 1850s. For three centuries, the family lived
on the island of Nantucket, with its Folger Whaling Museum and where five Folger families still reside.
Born in Brooklyn,
New York, Henry Folger went to Amherst College with financial aid from a roommate who immediately after graduation led him
to John D. Rockefeller and a five-decade career with the Standard Oil Company. His life-long debt to his liberal arts education,
was paid, however, when he bequeathed the trusteeship of The Folger Shakespeare Library, to Amherst. Endowed by virtually
his entire fortune, the Library houses and makes available to scholars his extraordinary collection of seventy-nine
Shakespeare first folios and other Elizabethan literary gems. The mystique of first folios has clearly caught the attention
of writers and readers lately; the Folger story remains largely obscure.
This will be a dual biography, for Emily played
an invaluable role in the collection. She earned a master’s degree at Vassar, with a thesis on “The True Text
of Shakespeare.” From careful examination of thousands of British book auction catalogues, she suggested items for her
husband to bid on. She maintained the catalogue of acquisitions. After being suddenly widowed in 1930, Emily Folger fulfilled
her husband mission and opened the Folger Library in 1932. Four years later, her estate further contributed to the Library
endowment.
I regret not being able to share a treasure-trove of Folger stories with my father. Folger graduated in
the Amherst class of 1879; the year Henry died, my father was editor of the Amherst Student. I graduated from
Amherst eight-four years after Henry. Insha’Allah, my biography will be published in 2012, the 80th anniversary of the
Folger Shakespeare Library and the 448th birthday of Shakespeare!
Stephen Grant's previous books include Peter Strickland. New England Shipmaster,
Boston Merchant, and First Consul to Senegal, which "gives us an engaging read and a fresh historical source
for the little explored relations between the United States and West Africa during
the last half of the nineteenth century."
