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stored in their living space. They kept an extensive card catalog at home in
Brooklyn, and when traveling, took a smaller, annotated set of check lists along with them. The collection itself was stored among several fireproof warehouse companies throughout Manhattan, in specially-designed wooden cases originally meant to hold two five-gallon cans of oil each. Frederick Fales, a co-worker of Folger's at Standard Oil, initially designed and ordered these air-tight wooden cases for company use. Some of the most valuable items were kept in bank vaults, or in a safe in Folger's office.
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299:. The stock Folger held in Standard Oil of New Jersey would contribute significantly to Folger's ability to collect Shakespeareana. In 1908, he was elected assistant treasurer of Jersey Standard, and joined its board of sixteen directors, managing the company's finances and compiling production data. That year, Folger was also elected to Jersey Standard's executive committee.
314:, a Texan company that became a fully owned subsidiary of Socony in 1925. He retired as president in 1923, but stayed at Socony as the first chairman of its board of trustees until 1928, when he officially retired to devote all of his attention to plans for his Shakespeare Library. Folger was succeeded as president by
283:. The Pratt Company was already associated with Standard Oil at that time. Folger quickly showed his prowess as a mathematician and statistician; his management of data on oil processing led to a promotion in 1886, when he became the secretary of Standard Oil's manufacturing committee. In 1890, Folger wrote
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In 1909, Folger established a
Shakespeare Prize at Amherst; winning students won a cash prize, and their essays joined Folger's collection and currently reside in the Folger Shakespeare Library. Folger also made donations to Amherst College's library, contributing many duplicate volumes purchased at
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The
Folgers chose items to purchase from booksellers' catalogues, which were initially perused and marked up by Emily, before she passed them on to Henry, who kept an extensive and precise list of items he intended to bid on. If possible, he inspected an item personally before purchasing it. He also
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as the
Library's architect, suggested by Alexander Trowbridge, an architect who had married into the Pratt family and stayed on the project as consulting architect. Folger played an integral part in the design and execution of the Library's classical exterior and Tudor interior. The inclusion of an
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Henry Clay Folger met Emily Clara Jordan in the early 1880s at a meeting of the Irving
Literary Circle in Brooklyn. Both were close, respectively, with the Pratt siblings Charles and Lillie. Early in their relationship, Henry and Emily connected via Shakespeare. At an 1882 picnic held by the Irving
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In May 1930, Henry Folger was admitted to St. John's
Hospital in Brooklyn for surgery on an enlarged prostate. While recovering, he continued to work on the construction and development of his Shakespeare Library from his sickbed. He later had a second prostate operation prior to his death on June
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and other markings. Following this trend, his Folio collection was marked with diversity in provenance and condition. He preferred to purchase Early
Editions of books published between 1567 and 1606, in addition to manuscripts of the period. Based on their collective knowledge of Latin and French,
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Early in his career at
Standard Oil and as a collector, Folger doubted that he would eventually have the funds to build a memorial or library for his growing collection, and in 1895 he offered to sell it to John D. Rockefeller, who refused. Before he acquired the funds for what was to become the
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in 1896 for a thesis on
Shakespeare. Folger used professional booksellers as middlemen at auctions, believing that the concealment of his identity would keep prices low. Due to the growing size of the collection and their concern for fireproofing, eventually few of the Folgers' acquisitions were
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as trust administrator. With additional funding from Emily Folger, the library opened in 1932 on April 23, the date traditionally believed to be
Shakespeare's birthday. Folger's collection of Shakespearean works is considered one of the most important resources for scholars of the playwright.
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and Emily's proficiency in German, the couple also favored rare volumes published on the Continent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The couple was less interested in art collection, and many of the Shakespeare-related paintings they purchased were misattributed to artists like
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11, 1930. His funeral was held at Brooklyn's Central Congregational Church, where he had been an active member. Reverend Samuel Parkes Cadman, who, along with his wife, had been close with the Folgers, gave Henry's eulogy. Henry's ashes were interred beneath the Folgers' copy of
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Elizabethan theater within the Library's main building was also Folger's idea, though he intended it as a venue for academic lectures rather than performances. Folger hired sculptor John Gregory to design the relief sculptures that appear on the building's facade. The
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Folger's assets increased in 1899, when he was promoted to chairman of the manufacturing committee, the same year that Standard Oil of New Jersey became the central holding company for the Standard Oil Trust, which dissolved after the passage of the
219:, the businessman and president of Adelphi's board of trustees, became a mentor to him. At Adelphi, Folger was schooled in art, chemistry, classics, and recitation, and was elected president of the school's literary association. He then attended
365:, where Henry enjoyed participating in golf tournaments in his later years. Though the Folgers had no children, they considered their collection to be their descendants, and Henry was known to refer to his rare books as "the boys."
415:, and even his wife, to fund his purchases. He generally paid for items in cash, a strategy that earned him the favor of many booksellers who needed immediate funds. Folger also preferred to purchase whole collections, like the
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Folger financed a half-century of collecting with his Standard Oil salary and extensive investments in the company. His high placement at Standard Oil also allowed him to take out loans with his friend Charles Millard Pratt,
502:. Outside of work, his great interests were his Shakespeare collection and, in later life, golf, which he often played with Rockefeller. He was a trustee of the Central Congregational Church in Brooklyn and established the
235:'s. He identified a Shakespeare-related essay contest as the origin of his obsession with the Bard. His wife, Emily, however, would later attribute Folger's initial fascination with Shakespeare to an 1879 lecture by
453:, Folger and his wife began searching for a location for his Shakespeare library. Among the sites he and Emily considered were Amherst and Nantucket, Massachusetts, the University of Chicago, New York City, and
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Folger was a trustee of the Hamilton Trust Company, Brooklyn, New York, and a director of Seaboard National Bank in New York. In 1914 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from
227:, a close friend and son of Folger's mentor at Adelphi. To fund his education, Folger competed in many oratorical essay contests, winning prizes in 1876 and again in 1879, which paid for his
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to break up the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey monopoly resulted in the election of Folger as president of the second-largest company formed from the dissolved Jersey Standard, the
381:, purchased in 1889 for $ 107.50. He purchased his first original copy of the First Folio four years later, in 1893. Unlike other wealthy collectors of the period, like
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350:, where Emily had spent her teenage years. The Folgers had no children. They lived in rented houses in Brooklyn throughout most of their lives, moving to
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In 1956, the Folger Shakespeare Library received Folger's walnut desk from Socony Mobil Oil. Since that year, it has been used by the Library's director.
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avoided consulting scholarly experts about rare volumes, preferring his own and Emily's expertise, as she received an M.A. from
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passed a resolution allowing use of the land on East Capitol Street where the Folger Shakespeare Library now stands.
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of the library was laid in 1930, but Henry Folger died soon afterward. The bulk of his fortune was left in
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in 1895 and to 24 Brevoot Place in 1910, but later purchased an estate in Glen Cove, Long Island in 1929.
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American Shakespeare collector, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library
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in what is now the Folger Shakespeare Library's Old Reading Room. His wife Emily died in 1936.
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Folger was an avid collector of Shakespeareana, assembling the world's largest collection of
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collection, acquired in 1908, because bulk purchases drove down prices of individual items.
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editions of Shakespeare's plays. The first rare book Folger acquired was a 1685 copy of the
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Literary Circle, Charles and Lillie prompted the two to each give a toast; Emily drew from
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and Mark Carnes (eds.) New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Volume 8, pp. 169–170.
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auction to the College. The most valuable of these donations were two leaves from a
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In a 1933 lecture delivered after his death, Emily identified
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Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger
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Folger in 1879, the year he graduated from Amherst College
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from 1879 to 1881, gaining admittance to the bar in 1881.
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The Library in the New Age, an article by Robert Darnton
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Petroleum: Its Production and Products in Pennsylvania
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After the passage of this legislation, Folger hired
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231:of school. Folger modeled his rhetorical style on
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544:and articles on Shakespeare and Shakespeareana.
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654:"Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Shakespeare Garden"
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601:Lynch, Kathleen, "Folger, Henry Clay,"
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542:Petroleum: Its Production and Products
357:The Folgers took annual vacations to
267:Beginning in 1881, he worked for the
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172:Henry Clay Folger Jr. was born in
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308:Standard Oil Company of New York
530:Shakespeare's funerary monument
486:Other interests and activities
325:Marriage to Emily Clara Jordan
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494:Central Congregational Church
688:The Millionaire and the Bard
603:American National Biography,
176:to Henry Clay Folger Sr. of
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780:Folger Shakespeare Library
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162:Folger Shakespeare Library
120:Folger Shakespeare Library
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575:Stephen H. Grant (2014).
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291:about the oil business.
289:Chambers's Encyclopaedia
178:Nantucket, Massachusetts
154:Standard Oil of New York
508:Brooklyn Botanic Garden
243:fraternity, graduating
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712:Collecting Shakespeare
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304:Supreme Court decision
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363:Hot Springs, Virginia
348:Elizabeth, New Jersey
297:Sherman Antitrust Act
281:Charles Millard Pratt
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225:Charles Millard Pratt
160:, and founder of the
150:Henry Clay Folger Jr.
141:Henry Clay Folger Sr.
770:People from Brooklyn
192:. He descended from
710:Book Discussion on
631:Grant, pp. 111–118.
455:Stratford-upon-Avon
417:Halliwell-Phillipps
413:John D. Rockefeller
396:Thomas Gainsborough
383:Henry E. Huntington
273:John D. Rockefeller
249:Columbia Law School
237:Ralph Waldo Emerson
130:Emily Jordan Folger
107:Columbia Law School
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471:cornerstone
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375:First Folio
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