From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the

Folgers director. This podcast is called My Known Library with volumes that I prize, and it's

about the founder of this institution, industrialist Henry Clay Fulcher. Those of us who work here here at the Folger pass images of our founders every day.

But it's extremely unlikely that most visitors give much thought to the people whose passion and persistence,

not to mention money, made this institution possible, Mr. Folger and his wife, Emily.

Andrea Mays has written a biography of Henry Clay Folger.

It's called The Millionaire and the Bard, and as you'll hear, because Andrea Mays is an economist,

her approach to Mr. Folger's story is different from that of others who've told it before.

Andrea Mays is interviewed by Neva Grant.

Let's start with the man himself, Henry Clay Folger.

What, as you began to really study him and to kind of live in his world, what drew you in?

Who was this person?

He started out as a clerk and ended up as the president and later chairman of the board of the largest

corporation in the world at the time. I had already known a little bit about J.P. Morgan as a collector,

about Henry Huntington as a collector. And I just thought his story was interesting enough to tell.

He quietly and with a relatively small bank account

was able to amass an unbelievable collection of Shakespeareana. And I guess if you could say

the crown jewels of which were these first folios, close to half of them, right? Well, at the time that he died, he owned more than half of the known copies.

Now more copies have come to light.

They're in various stages of completeness, but it's a little over a third of the world's

known supply of first folios in that one building, yes.

And give us some sense of what it is, what a first folio is and why that is such a

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