Andrea Mays on The Millionaire and the Bard (Rebroadcast)

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Henry Clay Folger paid a world record price for a book—not once, but twice—as he became the world's leading collector of Shakespeare First Folios. The Folger Shakespeare Library celebrated its 90th birthday this past April. Did you ever wonder how all of our books got here? We talk with economist and author Andrea Mays about The Millionaire and the Bard, her 2015 biography of Henry Clay Folger, who founded the Folger together with Emily Jordan Folger, his wife. Mays shares some of the fascinating financial and personal details of Folger's life: in particular, how he went about assembling the world’s largest Shakespeare collection. Mays is interviewed by Neva Grant. The Millionaire and the Bard was published by Simon & Schuster in 2015. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “Mine Own Library With Volumes That I Prize” was published November 18, 2015, and rebroadcast June 21, 2022. It was produced under the supervision of Garland Scott, and is presented with permission of rlpaulproductions LLC, which created it for the Folger. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French and Ben Lauer are the web producers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who owns Shakespeare? We all do in a way, but when it comes to the rarest printed editions of his words,
0:10.0	that can be another story.
0:19.1	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:23.6	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger Director.
0:26.0	The Folger building is under renovation right now, but when it's not, those of us who work here
0:31.1	pass images of our founders every day.
0:34.2	It's extremely unlikely, though, that most visitors to the Folger give much thought to the people
0:39.2	whose passion and persistence, not to mention their money, made this institution possible.
0:45.1	That is Henry Clay Folger and his wife, Emily.
0:48.9	This June marks the 165th anniversary of Mr. Folger's birth,
0:53.6	and we're taking this occasion to rebroadcast an
0:56.3	interview we originally presented in 2016. It's an interview with Andrea Mays, who had just
1:02.3	written a biography of Henry Clay Folger titled The Millionaire and the Bard. Andrea Mays is an
1:08.8	economist, and as you'll hear, her approach to Mr. Fulcher's story is different from the one others have used before.
1:16.2	We call this podcast, My Known Library with volumes that I prize.
1:21.7	Andrea Mays is interviewed by Nava Grant.
1:24.4	Let's start with the man himself, Henry Clay F Folger. What, as you began to really study him
1:31.1	and to kind of live in his world, what drew you in? Who was this person? He started out as a clerk
1:37.6	and ended up as the president and later chairman of the board of the largest corporation in the world
1:43.8	at the time. I had already known a little bit
1:47.0	about J.P. Morgan as a collector, about Henry Huntington as a collector. And I just thought his story
1:52.9	was interesting enough to tell. He quietly and with a relatively small bank account,
	...

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