Henry and Emily Folger: A Shakespearean Love Affair

In this installment of ‘Profiles in History,’ we meet the Folgers and their worthy obsession.

The First Folio at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The First Folio is the earliest known printing of 36 of Shakespeare's plays. Public Domain

Henry Clay Folger (1857–1930) was born in the metropolis of New York City. Emily Clara Jordan (1858-1936) was born in the small town of Ironton, Ohio. Their education and passion for William Shakespeare would eventually make them inseparable.

Folger was a scholarship student at the private Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn, New York, and later attended Amherst College from 1875 to 1879. Folger showed interest in and a talent for the arts, joining Amherst’s Glee Club, acting in the college’s presentation of “HMS Pinafore,” competing in oratorical contests, and winning a Kellogg Prize for his 1876 essay “Pericles before the Areopagus,” and taking first prize in 1879 with an essay on Alfred Lord Tennyson. During his graduation ceremony, he heard a speech by Ralph Waldo Emerson on the subject of Shakespeare, which ignited an interest in the Bard that soon became an obsession.