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The Millionaire and the Bard
Andrea Mays
Henry Folger's Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare's First Folio
Simon & Schuster
May 2015
On Sale: May 12, 2015
Featuring: Henry Condell; William Shakespeare; John Heminges
ISBN: 143911823X
EAN: 9781439118238
Kindle: B00LD1S4BM
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History | Non-Fiction Biography | Literature and Fiction Classics
Today it is the most valuable book in the world. Recently
one sold for over five million dollars. It is the book that
rescued the name of William Shakespeare and half of his
plays from oblivion. The Millionaire and the Bard
tells the miraculous and romantic story of the making of the
First Folio, and of the American industrialist whose
thrilling pursuit of the book became a lifelong obsession. When Shakespeare died in 1616 half of his plays died with
him. No one—not even their author—believed that his writings
would last, that he was a genius, or that future generations
would celebrate him as the greatest author in the history of
the English language. By the time of his death his plays
were rarely performed, eighteen of them had never been
published, and the rest existed only in bastardized forms
that did not stay true to his original language. Seven years later, in 1623, Shakespeare’s business partners,
companions, and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry
Condell, gathered copies of the plays and manuscripts,
edited and published thirty-six of them. This massive book,
the First Folio, was intended as a memorial to their
deceased friend. They could not have known that it would
become one of the most important books ever published in the
English language, nor that it would become a fetish object
for collectors. The Millionaire and the Bard is a literary detective
story, the tale of two mysterious men—a brilliant author and
his obsessive collector—separated by space and time. It is a
tale of two cities—Elizabethan and Jacobean London and
Gilded Age New York. It is a chronicle of two worlds—of art
and commerce—that unfolded an ocean and three centuries
apart. And it is the thrilling tale of the luminous book
that saved the name of William Shakespeare “to the last
syllable of recorded time.”
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