Interesting, a must for Shakespeare fans and anyone with an interest in collecting ( )

Digging this book out of my long library hold list and finally reading it dispelled any misgivings I have about letting things sit on my list for years. Thank you, library system, for never letting holds expire!
I don’t remember what originally got this book on my radar, but it finally floated into my notice this year, and I’m glad it did. My last nonfiction chapter-a-day book had its moments but was mostly kind of a slog, so this was a refreshing change.
I saw a play last year called “The Book of Will,” which was about how Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors, John Hemmings and Henry Condell, assembled and published his collected plays into the First Folio. I’d never heard the story before, and it was fascinating and moving. To think—if they hadn’t loved him the way they did and wanted to preserve his works for posterity—Shakespeare was already dead when they conceived the project—we may have never known about these plays or their author.
The first few chapters of this book are about Hemmings and Condell and the publication of the First Folio, the nature of book publishing at the time, and the ensuing versions of the folio (there were four, but each one was less accurate and valuable than the first). These absorbing chapters were my favorites of the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it all the way through.
The rest of the book is about Henry Folger—his growing interest in Shakespeariana, especially First Folios, and how it grew into obsessive, relentless collecting. By the end of his life, he had collected 82 First Folios, the largest private collection of them in the world. Along the way, the author paints a picture of Folger’s life: his marriage, his rising career with Standard Oil and his friendship with Rockefeller, his secretive collecting practices, and ultimately, his plan to house his collection in a library, rather than stashing it away in warehouses.
He and his wife were interesting individuals, and although the snapping up of so many First Folios struck me as somewhat greedy—I was glad when the Bodleian beat him out for a precious First Folio—they were portrayed as surprisingly down-to-earth and likable. His history with Standard Oil was less interesting to me, but the author didn’t linger on it any longer than was necessary.
Highly recommended to Shakespeare fans and folks who are interested in the history of publishing and book collecting. Great read! ( )

This was a fantastic read, it hits all the points in Shakespeare's life to drive you to understand teh process of the book being made, then leads into Henry Folger's life and the obsession with the first folio. this has made me want to see the Folger Shakespeare Library with how the author describes the library. This has becme one of my favorite books and has started my obsession with Henry C. Folger Jr. ( )

I could not put this book down. Real history, meaningful history, intrigue, passion, greed, envy, money, politics, scholarship, love, compulsion are all in this book. The author is clear, precise and insightful. She writes with a plan and flow which kept the story flowing and moving, dropping fascinating tidbits as she invoked my compulsive reading. Many may not be as enthralled and I have always struggled in reading or watching Shakespeare so it was the history and the players that snagged me. This was one of the most fun books I have read in a long time! ( )

If you are interested in Shakespeareana or even in rare books in general, this is a great book. In particular, I enjoyed the first part that described how the First Folio was originally put together, and how the next versions of the Folios changed (until Puritans came to power and the Folios stopped being printed altogether).

I didn't love Henry Folger himself, certainly not to the extent that the author, Andrea Mays, did. I really thought I would: I mean, he loved Shakespeare; I love Shakespeare. He was eccentric and reclusive; I am eccentric and as reclusive as my husband will put up with. Of course, Folger was also obscenely wealthy, which is, alas, where the similarities end.

But I had a couple of issues with Folger. First, I have qualms about his role at Standard Oil. It's hard to say a lot about that, given that Mays really doesn't cover his business career much except to list promotions; but what I know about the history of Standard Oil isn't flattering. Mays does make one brief comment to the effect that criticizing the treatment of Standard Oil's workforce displays an ignorance of economic realities; I did not find that a particularly convincing defense. Again, I don't know exactly what Folger did at Standard Oil. But I found it inherently difficult to root for an oil exec.

Secondly, the secrecy with which he conducted his negotiations bugged me, even though I realized it was a useful tactic. And when he's bidding against a library for an extremely valuable rare book with historical significance -- well, sorry, I want the library to win. It bothered me that Folger's acquisitions were hidden away. These are valuable pieces of literary history, and for years no one could study them--in fact, even Folger himself rarely saw them. What was the point of acquiring them? I kept wondering. Folger did seem to have a real affection for Shakespeare, but the appeal of the books seems to have been more of a game than anything else. To me, he was like a hunter who isn't hunting for food but just for the thrill. I thought it was a real shame that the books were essentially in a lockbox for decades.

I'm not arguing that Folger was a bad guy, necessarily, but I did wish the author had done a little more analysis of him as a person. I think a biography of him would probably be fascinating, but this book takes more of a bare-facts approach. The bare facts are interesting in themselves, but I still wish the author had engaged with Folger as a person a little more.

At the end of his life, of course, Folger did establish the beautiful Folger Shakespeare Library. This means that the many Folios he collected are now available for scholars to study, and I applaud him for that. Folger himself never got to see the finished library; like Moses, he died just before reaching the Promised Land.

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