The Folgers’ First Folios

Abstract

The Folger Shakespeare Library has 82 copies of First Folios, which is more than a third of the surviving total of 235 copies in the world. The married couple Henry and Emily Folger acquired these copies between 1893 and 1928. Most of the available posthumous narratives that discuss the Folgers’ zeal for collecting First Folios concentrate primarily on Henry Clay Folger’s biography and financial backing of the couple’s book collecting project. Only secondarily, if at all, is the focus on Emily Jordan Folger’s contribution to the collection. By calling attention to her Master’s thesis ‘The True Text of Shakespeare’, completed at Vassar College in 1896, this article suggests that greater acknowledgment of Emily Jordan Folger and her role in the collaboration is not just an ethical obligation but also helps us understand the intellectual framework of the Folgers’ seemingly compulsive efforts to collect, above all, multiple copies of the First Folio. This understanding, furthermore, casts light on the Bardolatrous reverence of the First Folio as a fetishistic cultural embodiment of ‘The True Text of Shakespeare’ in late nineteenth century USA.