Folger, Emily Clara

Folger, Emily Clara (b. Jordon)

(1858–1936) Shakespeare collector; born in Ironton, Ohio. A Vassar graduate, in 1885 she married Standard Oil executive Henry Clay Folger, who collected Shakespeare folios. Living relatively simply, in 50 years they amassed 100,000 books and manuscripts, primarily on the Elizabethan period. She became a Shakespearean scholar, authenticating and cataloguing their purchases; after her husband's death (1932) she oversaw the building of the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. (1932).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.