Steve Grant’s First Folio Tour

This year, in honor of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (on April 23, 1616), the Folger Shakespeare Library has organized an extraordinary tour of First Folios from the Folger collection to all fifty states.  Steve Grant, author of our widely-admired Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, has undertaken an similarly ambitious speaking schedule that will take him to several of the hosting libraries, museums, and institutions participating in the tour.  We’ve invited Steve to provide regular updates as he follows the First Folios around the country, speaking about their important literary and cultural history the extraordinary legacy of Henry and Emily Folger.

Guest post by Stephen H. Grant

On display in the New Mexico Museum of Art during February, 2016, Shakespeare’s First Folio open to the “To Be or Not To Be” speech in Hamlet.

Partnering with St. Johns College in Santa Fe, the New Mexico Museum of Art won the competition to host the First Folio Exhibition from February 5 to February 28, 2016. While the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC––only two blocks from the U.S. Capitol––required that host institutions organize at least FOUR events during the exhibit, the Museum arranged FORTY events.

One event was the Shakespeare Treasure Hunt. Youngsters picked up a free treasure map and followed clues based on quotations from the Bard that led them downtown to declaim the lines to local merchants. Visitors from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art put on a workshop on the breath, sound, and articulation on Shakespeare’s sonnets, including practice in reading Shakespeare out loud. The Museum organized a day of love and art where participants created cards, heart ornaments, and Valentine’s Day collages inspired by Shakespeare.

Director of the Palace Press at New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, Tom Leech, demonstrates a wooden hand press like those used in early 17th century England.

Of all the First Folio Exhibit venues, New Mexico is the only state where a government was operating when Shakespeare was alive and writing The Tempest. Across the street from the New Mexico Museum of Art is the New Mexico History Museum, created in 1610 as Palace of the Governors, when Spain established its seat of government in Santa Fe to cover what is now the American southwest. It is the oldest continuously occupied building in the United States. Award-winning Palace Press printers Tom Leech and James Bourland mounted a multi-part exhibit where they printed facsimiles of a First Folio page using a replica Gutenberg wooden hand press. Visitors were invited to make their own prints to take home.

Steve Grant outside New Mexico Museum of Art before his talk to 200 enthusiastic Shakespeare addicts.

In Conversation with John F. Andrews, President of the Shakespeare Guild, I spoke in St. Francis Auditorium on Collecting Shakespeare and the First Folio to 200 Shakespeare enthusiasts come from the area to catch a glimpse of the First Folio on display in an adjacent room and opened to the “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy from Hamlet. The Shakespeare Society bid adieu to the First Folio on February 28 by performing familiar farewell scenes from Shakespeare.

Stephen H. Grant is the author of Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, published by Johns Hopkins. He is a senior fellow at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and the author of Peter Strickland: New London Shipmaster, Boston Merchant, First Consul to Senegal. We expect Steve’s next report on the First Folio tour after he speaks in San Diego on June 22 the San Diego Public Library.

STEVE’S 2016 FIRST FOLIO TOUR

April 15, Noon
The Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of D.C.
Capitol Skyline Hotel, 10 I St., SW, Washington, D.C. 20024
OPEN TO MEMBERSHIP

Tom Leech designed and printed this “WANTED Willy the Kid” poster displayed in many Santa Fe store windows during the residence of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare First Folio.

April 18, 10:30 am – noon
Live & Learn Bethesda Talk
4805 Edgemoor Ln, Bethesda, MD 20814
REGISTRATION REQUIRED

June 21, 11:00 am
Calvary Presbyterian Church Seniors Program Talk
2515 Fillmore St. San Francisco, CA 94115
PRIVATE EVENT

June 22, 6:30 pm
San Diego Public Library Talk
330 Park Blvd., San Diego CA 92101
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

June 23, 6:00 pm
San Francisco Public Library Talk
Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin St, San Francisco CA 94102
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

September 29, 6:30 pm
Cathedral West Condominiums Talk
4100 Cathedral Ave. NW, Washington DC, 20016
FOR RESIDENTS AND GUESTS

 

 

Two local treasures head to the Library of Congress

JHU Press and the book-loving community in Baltimore are losing two treasured colleagues to the Library of Congress. We hate to see them go—but we’re thrilled for both of them and so proud of the extraordinary recognition their appointments represent. Becky Clark, JHUP’s talented and energetic director of marketing and institutional outreach, leaves us this week to become the LOC’s Director of Publishing. Carla Hayden, the widely-respected head of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, has been nominated by President Obama to become the 14^th Librarian of Congress.  We extend cheers and best wishes to these exceptional friends and colleagues as their careers take them down the Parkway to the nation’s capital.

Becky Clark has served for twelve years as JHUP’s director of marketing and institutional outreach, overseeing sales, promotion, publicity, rights, and digital publishing strategies for about 170 new books each year. Becky has been an invaluable colleague with a legendary work ethic informed by remarkable judgment, grace, and kindness. Before joining the Press in 2003, she held similar positions at the Brookings Institution Press, the New Republic, Counterpoint Press, and Moon Travel Handbooks.  She has been an adjunct faculty member in George Washington University’s Master of Professional Studies in Publishing program and a past president of Washington Book Publishers. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of American University Presses. In her new position at the Library of Congress, Becky will oversee a program of institutional publications, scholarly and trade books, and consumer products highlighting the Library’s world-famous collections.

Carla Hayden has been the CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore since 1993. Over the years, she and the Pratt staff have been gracious hosts to numerous JHUP authors for book talks, signings, and other programs. Most notably, Carla has been a champion of making Baltimore’s 22-branch library system a beacon of hope and possibility for the citizens of our city. Prior to joining the Pratt, she was Deputy Commissioner and Chief Librarian of the Chicago Public Library from 1991 to 1993. She was President of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004 and has served as a member of the National Museum and Library Services Board since 2010. If confirmed by Congress, Carla would be the first woman and the first African-American to lead the LOC.

We are enormously proud and grateful as these two treasured friends and colleagues take up their duties at one of the nation’s greatest institutions, the 214-year-old Library of Congress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Folio, the book that gave us Shakespeare: On tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2016

Guest post by Stephen H.Grant

Johns Hopkins University Press released Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger on the Ides of March in 2014, the 450th anniversary of the Bard’s birth.  In 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the most famous and valuable Shakespeare volume––the 1623 First Folio––is on tour to all 50 American states plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico.  Eighteen of the 82 copies of the First Folio that Henry Folger purchased are traveling. The institutional hosts were selected after a competitive process marked by 140 inquiries, 101 completed applications, and winning proposals from 23 museums, 20 universities, five public libraries, three historical societies, and one theater. The University of Notre Dame in Indiana opened the First Folio tour on January 4, 2016 and The Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee will close the tour on January 2, 2017. This link to the Folger gives the information about where and when the rare volume will be displayed.

The tour is an ambitious, complicated, and unprecedented project, made possible in part through the sponsorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Google.org. The Folger Library’s partners in organizing it are the Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association.

A 1623 Shakespeare First Folio open to the title-page and Ben Jonson’s preface.

What is a folio? The word “folio” is a printer’s term, referring to the size of the page, approximately 9 by 13 inches. (A folio-size paper folded in half, is called a “quarto.”) When Shakespeare’s plays were printed individually, they appeared in quarto. When all his plays were posthumously published, they appeared in folio. The First Folio of 1623 is the sole source for half of Shakespeare’s dramatic production. Eighteen of his plays (including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, and As You Like It) had never been printed before and would probably be unknown today without this early compilation. They were offered to the public unbound, with pages uncut. Due to the large-size format of the volume, and the quality of the handmade sheets of rag paper imported from northern France, the sales price was high for the times. While attending the play cost one shilling six pence; the cost of this prestigious book was one pound (twenty shillings), or the equivalent of buying forty loaves of bread. By comparison, Sotheby’s in London sold a First Folio in 2006 for 2.8 million pounds, or the equivalent of buying 125 new automobiles.

A 1623 Shakespeare First Folio open to the Hamlet soliloquy, “To be or not to be.” At every location on the tour, the First Folio will be open to this page.

The First Folio is the most coveted secular book in the English language and one of the most important books in the world. Shakespearean scholars consider it to be the most authentic version of the Bard’s dramatic output. The original print run was about 750 copies. Only 233 copies of the First Folio are known to exist today. Why did Mr. Folger seek to acquire as many copies as he could? Every hand-printed book is unique. In the 17th century, with hand-set type, sometimes a letter wore out and was replaced. Spelling was not standardized. As many as nine typesetters or compositors worked on the First Folio in the printing shop with idiosyncrasies such that experts can identify which compositor worked on which copy. Many of the copies have marginalia (words, phrases, poems, drawings) added in the margins by avid readers over the centuries. Some assertive readers considered that they could improve upon the Bard’s English and crossed out his words and inserted their own!

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STEVE’S FIRST FOLIO TOUR

I will next report on the First Folio tour after speaking at two events in Santa Fe later this month. My major Folger talks for the remainder of this year are:

New Mexico Museum of Art Talk Friday, Feb. 19, 2016 at 2 PM
http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/events.php?action=detail&eventID=2685

Reception by Friends of the Santa Fe Public Library, Feb. 20, 2016 5:30 – 7:30 PM
http://www.santafelibraryfriends.org/SpecialEvents.html

Stanford University Book Store Talk Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016 at 6 PM
https://events.stanford.edu/events/572/57263/

Marin County Book Passage Talk Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 at 7:00 PM
http://www.bookpassage.com/event/stephen-grant-collecting-shakespeare

The Homestead, Hot Springs, Va. Talk Saturday, Mar. 12 at 4 PM
http://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/homestead-virginia/things-to-do/event-calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D117806472

San Diego Public Library Talk Wednesday, June 22, 2016 at 6:30 PM
330 Park Blvd
San Diego, CA 92101

San Francisco Public Library Talk Thursday, June 23, 2016 at 6 PM
Main Library Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin St.
San Francisco, CA 94102

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Stephen H. Grant is the author of Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. He is a senior fellow at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and the author of Peter Strickland: New London Shipmaster, Boston Merchant, First Consul to Senegal.

Use promo code “HDPD” to receive a 30% discount when you order your copy of Collecting Shakespeare.

Libraries after communism

The fall of communism in Eastern Europe happened twenty-five years ago, and it seems like a vestige of some bygone era. But some institutions in former Soviet republics and other countries in the region still feel the effects of that tremendous change.

That notion spurred the creation of a pair of special issues of the journal Library Trends in Volume 63. Guest edited by Hermina G.B. Anghelescu, the articles in the issues took a comprehensive look at the difficulties faced by libraries after the Berlin Wall came down.

Articles from librarians in around two dozen countries were spread across the Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 issues. Anghelescu joined us for a two-part podcast on the special topic. Part 1 focuses on the challenges in putting together such an ambitious journal project. Part 2 talks about the challenges libraries have faced over the past quarter of a century.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Fifty Folger gigs in 18 months

Guest post by Stephen H. Grant

Authors are blessed when their books are published on important anniversaries. Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger hit the stands in the spring of 2014, coinciding with the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth in 1564. After the Folger Shakespeare Library was dedicated in 1932, four decades passed before the first biography of its founders appeared. This lapse is quite surprising when one considers that the private research library, only two blocks from the US Capitol, houses the largest Shakespeare collection in the world. The biography unlocks the key to how, during the Gilded Age, a quiet Victorian couple, together and alone, pulled off the feat from their Brooklyn brownstone.

The (Masonic) Naval Lodge on Capitol Hill.

During the last 18 months, I have been active in arranging speaking venues, book signings, and media events in Washington, DC, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Connecticut. In addition to four events organized by the publisher, hosts have included 13 private clubs, 12 libraries, 6 public halls, 3 bookshops, 3 private homes, 3 radio stations, 2 TV stations, 2 colleges, 1 museum, and 1 theatre.

The author’s “Collecting Shakespeare” table with Steve Forbes seated nearby, at the Union League Club in New York.

High points were TV performances on CBS This Morning and C-SPAN2, and peddling books at a table near Ralph Nader, Cokie Roberts, Ted Olson, and Steve Forbes (photo 2). Chagrined to find a long taxi line at New York’s Penn Station, I folded my six-foot-four frame into a pedicab and bounced along the Manhattan roadway to the sedate Union League Club. As I emerged from between two plastic flaps, the doorman eyed me warily.

Franklin obelisk gravestone in center of Old Granary Burial Ground; behind is the Boston Athenaeum.

A cool DC venue was the Naval Lodge (photo 1), chartered in 1805, only paces from the Folger Shakespeare Library. In Boston, it doesn’t get any better than the Athenaeum, founded in 1807. Adjacent to this private bibliophiles’ club one block from the Massachusetts State House lies the Old Granary Burial Ground, established in 1660. The stone obelisk gravestone in the center (photo 3) contains the remains of Abiah Folger and her husband, Josiah Franklin, the parents of Benjamin Franklin. Henry Folger traced his line back to Abiah’s father, Peter. Henry once wrote, “Had I not collected Shakespeariana, I would have collected Frankliniana.”

Attending the Athenaeum lecture (photo 4) was a grandniece of Henry Folger who remembers nervously reciting a poem from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses at a Thanksgiving dinner at Emily Folger’s residence in Glen Cove, Long Island after “Uncle Henry” died.

On screen, budding bibliophile Henry Folger grasping the first of 92,000 books he will acquire.

The Theatre Library Association named Collecting Shakespeare a finalist for the George Freedley Memorial Award in 2014 in the field of live theatre or performance.  Next year, 2016, marks the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death in 1616. Gigs are already scheduled in Santa Fe, San Diego, Palo Alto, and San Francisco. Lucky author!

Stephen H. Grant is the author of Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. He is a senior fellow at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and the author of Peter Strickland: New London Shipmaster, Boston Merchant, First Consul to Senegal.

 

 

 

 

 

Are you reading Project MUSE Commons?

Our friends over at Project MUSE have created a wonderful blog called Project MUSE Commons to highlight the amazing range of journals and books they make available to readers around the world. The Staff Spotlight feature, written by Alyssa Weinstein, has been a great introduction to some of the talented and dedicated colleagues who make MUSE such a highly-regarded member of the scholarly community. We are pleased to excerpt portions of three posts here, and we cordially invite you to read the full interviews and much more at Project MUSE Commons.

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Staff Spotlight: Michael J. Seidlinger

It’s not surprising that at a place like Project MUSE, the people who work here are as interesting as MUSE itself. We want our readers to get to know our people a little better. We start this new staff spotlight series with Michael Seidlinger, production specialist at MUSE. Michael is a writer and the owner and operator of an independent press.

1. What brought you to Project MUSE?

Dean Smith was a professor of mine while I was in the graduate publishing program at George Washington University. He was one of the few professors that I really connected with, frequently chatting about publishing goals, publishing trends, and so forth. I believe it was in November or December of last year, via the GW cohort Facebook group, that Dean posted about an opening at Muse. I applied and mentioned it to Dean, who told me that it was a wise move. Skip the interview process, the move to Baltimore, and the first day, week, month—here I am, at MUSE, happily part of the team.

2. We hear you are an author. What do you write?

Yeah, but I feel like most of us are authors in that we all carry along with us a suitcase full of stories, dreams, and aspirations, just waiting to be told. I feel like what an author, specifically a “published one,” does is cannibalize and curate those stories, the material that most of us hold dear, into some readable form. In that sense, I write fiction affected by experience, marked by memory. In another, more direct sense, I write surrealist fiction, mostly novels and novellas. I cannibalize all that I’ve felt and reuse those emotions, memories, and feelings as raw material for the page. I am both proud and ashamed of being a cannibal. And yet, I’m still doing just that—so I don’t know what that says about me.

3. Have any of your books made it to MUSE or been reviewed on MUSE?

Yes, and that was quite the surprise. A novel of mine called The Fun We’ve Had, which was published in May of 2014, was recently reviewed by a journal that publishes with MUSE—American Book Review. I still remember when I was zoned out, working as usual, headphones on, focus attuned to the computer screen, any other workday really, pushing the task at hand, when David, a fellow colleague and friend of mine, walked up and let me know that he was splitting/processing the review. Given that I had pretty much forgotten all about that book, and everything it took to make it a reality, I guess you could call that an amazing surprise, the stuff that could truly “make” a day.

The the entire interview here.

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Staff Spotlight: Lora Czarnowsky

Project MUSE’s customer support coordinator, Lora Czarnowsky, is one of MUSE’s longest time staff members. What I bet you didn’t know is that, besides doing so much hard work here, she also volunteers, raised three awesome kids, and is very active in all of her communities. Keep reading to learn more about this awesome lady!

 1. You have a very rich heritage. Tell us about it.

I come from a very mixed background, which is always fun. My  family is  of Irish, French, German and Native American ancestry. Growing up as a mixed race woman, I’ve been able to view life through different lenses. I would say I identify with my Native American roots most of all. I am what is known as Metis. Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. I grew up during some explosive times and got to witness a lot of this first hand.  Realizing we have third world conditions within the United States truly opened my eyes.

2. What is your favorite Native American ritual?

It’s really not a ritual, but one of my favorite things is a good powwow. We come together as a community and offer prayers, sing, feel the heartbeat of the drum, and dance. It’s a time to feel like family again.

3. How have your roots helped to shape the way you see the world?

I have been to powwows across the country, spent time on Pine Ridge, and marched on Washington with AIM (the Native American Movement) and other groups. I have seen a people with great pride and big hearts fighting to save their culture. Native Americans are the forgotten minority. Our children have the highest suicide rates and that is because they have lost hope of a future. I have seen men Sun Dance till they collapsed as the entire community gathered to support their prayers. It’s hard not to be humbled when you see the real side of Native American life.

Read the entire interview here.

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Staff Spotlight: Steve Allen

Steve Allen has been with Project MUSE for just about four years. He currently works in tech and is one of the more hilarious bloggers to appear on the Commons. See his post, “How Lincoln Drove Me Crazy.”

1. You just joined the tech team after being in production for three years. What is it like looking at MUSE from a totally different perspective?

The similarities are there. The job changes, but the little things all stay the same. Production has little issues with our systems that no one vocalizes because they don’t matter in the grand scheme, just like tech. As a weird hybrid-bridge person in the position of having recently transferred, I could identify some of these issues and try to find fixes. Production makes content go, and tech allows production to make content go. They’re still related, but on the tech side now, it’s less about making the content go and more about trying to help the people who actually do the work. It’s different, but with the same goal.

2. You have some really cool hobbies. Can you tell us about two of them and explain what got you into them and why you love them?

You know, “cool” is a really subjective word. And then to further clarify and categorize my hobbies as “REALLY cool” is . . . difficult to reconcile for me.

I paint miniatures and create landscaped tables on which one might play various war games. So “cool,” I think, is an impossibility, and “really cool” should be immediately thrown out the proverbial window, but I’m okay with my hobby being “different.” Different is way easier to justify.

I mean sure, I spent years honing a craft. That’s pretty cool. But wait, the downward slope begins. I have many, many tubes of acrylic paints and brushes of different sizes and shapes ranging from really small to “there are three fibers coming out of this fulcrum.”

I’ve spent maybe too long deciding on color schemes and the proper allocation of tones between cloth, skin, leather, and metallic surfaces, making sure I have enough contrast between layers while still retaining the unity of a theme. I’ve spent definitely too long cutting sections of solid foam insulation, sanding and texturing, then choosing the right equipment and products to create fantastical landscapes that look satisfying, but also allow dice to roll across unimpeded.

Also, I play Dungeons & Dragons and build all my computers at home. If I’m going to check the “plays tabletop war games” box on my nerd scorecard, I may as well check all of them.

3. Tell us about your pets.

Right now I have a corgi named Loki. He’s calmed down a lot from his puppy days, but is still way, way into Frisbees. He’s basically the best Frisbee retrieval device on the face of the Earth. No sentient being has come close to taking that title from him.

We had a border collie named Butters on loan for a while from my mother-in-law, but it wasn’t a good fit. Loki’s a one-dog-per-house kind of dog. The jealousy to fur ratio there is basically 3/1, and that guy has two coats of fur. They did the math, and it equated to “You pet me now, don’t even look at that border collie. I can smell you thinking about it and that’s terrible.”

Read the entire interview here.

Happy Birthday, Henry Clay Folger!

Guest post by Stephen H. Grant

Here are three things to remember about Henry Clay Folger on his 158th birthday, June 18, 2015.

One. The most astounding single fact about Henry Clay Folger (1857–1930) is that he made his way to the very top of two distinct lines of endeavor. From 1879 to 1928 he climbed the ranks at Standard Oil Company from statistical clerk at age 22 to CEO of the largest, most successful petroleum business on the planet. AND he assembled the largest collection of Shakespeare items in the world. His doctor of letters degree from Amherst College cites “his services in the affairs of a great empire of industry whose produce is on every sea and its light on all lands and for his knowledge in the most important field known in English literature.” John D. Rockefeller sent Folger this wry message: “I congratulate you upon receiving the degree, and that your connection with a great and useful business organization did not detract from your high standing.” Even more to Folger’s credit was that he was not born into wealth. He needed a loan from classmates to complete his college education.Two. Henry Folger’s most erudite, persistent, and successful bookseller, Dr. A. S. W. (Abraham Simon Wolf) Rosenbach of Philadelphia, called Folger “the most consistent book collector I’ve ever known.” What he meant by that phrase was that Folger kept his eyes on the prize. Folger bought virtually anything and everything by or associated with Shakespeare that he could acquire–as long as the price was right. Folger drove a hard bargain, such as insisting on ten percent discount when he paid with ready cash. Corresponding with 600 book dealers, 150 in London alone, Folger shared with them why he rejected a book offer or sent it back upon examination. Many times it was because the item was not “Shakespearean enough.” He was training them to go out and seek more and better items for his library.

Toddler Henry holding a book.

Dr. Folger holding a book.

Evidence of Henry’s consistency appears even in how he held a book. The above portraits produced 67 years apart reveal his loving two-handed grasp.

Three. Henry Folger was a very private man. He kept no diary, gave only one interview. His postcards home while on a business trip out west sent from “Henry Clay Folger” to his wife “EJF” revealed “All in fine health and spirits.” He used shorthand for many personal notes. He signed his book cables “GOLFER.” He bought property without his name appearing on the deeds. He entreated his booksellers not to divulge what he paid for his antiquarian book purchases. His greatest glee was keeping from the world how many First Folios he owned.

Only with family and close friends did Henry open up a little. Emily described her husband this way. “Not an exuberant personality, Henry always was reticent and possibly shy by nature.”

Lawrence (Larry) Fraser Abbott and Walter (Crit) Hayden Crittenden were two Amherst chums he confided in. They had done the same things Henry had: won a prize in oratory, written for the student newspaper, sung in a fraternity quartet, earned a law degree. Crit wrote, “Mr. Folger was by nature a very shy man, almost bashful. He avoided all possible meetings and conventions, or in fact any form of gatherings, due to his shyness. It was therefore the privilege of but a few to know him intimately.” H.C. wrote to Larry, “I presume no one is better informed than I am about the value of Shakespeare literature.” Folger would not have shared that claim with just anyone. Only with Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, did he share–the year he died–that he wondered if he would have his biography written some day.

Stephen H. Grant is the author of Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, published by Johns Hopkins. He is a senior fellow at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and the author of Peter Strickland: New London Shipmaster, Boston Merchant, First Consul to Senegal.

 

 

 

JHU Press receives Mellon grant to develop MUSE Open

By Melanie Schaffner, Project MUSE Staff

Johns Hopkins University Press is delighted to announce the award of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the development of MUSE Open, a distribution channel for open access monographs through Project MUSE, a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community.

“The Mellon Foundation was an early and important supporter of Project MUSE,” said Kathleen Keane, Director of Johns Hopkins University Press. “Mellon’s support of MUSE Open will be instrumental in sustaining and extending our mission to ensure the long-term viability of monographic scholarship.”

MUSE Open will leverage a powerful and trusted distribution channel for long-form humanities scholarship in an enriched digital format. Monographs included in the program will be distributed globally and made visible and usable through discoverability and accessibility tools normally reserved for paid content. MUSE Open content will be promoted to researchers, students, and general readers worldwide through existing library channels and through social media, including MUSE Commons. Participating publishers will enjoy the freedom to control the sales, distribution, and marketing of the corresponding printed works.

“In an era of declining library budgets and shifts in reading and consumption habits, scholarly publishers find it increasingly difficult to sustain high-quality digital and print monograph publishing programs in the humanities and qualitative social sciences,” said Keane. “MUSE Open will take advantage of new funding models that take the purchasing burden away from end users for the purposes of providing important new scholarly content available free of charge to readers around the world.”

Since its founding in 1878, Johns Hopkins University Press has demonstrated a commitment to both tradition and innovation. Today it stands as one of the world’s largest university presses, publishing 83 scholarly journals along with award-winning books in history, science, education, criticism, political science, and consumer health.

A ground-breaking collaboration of the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries and the JHU Press founded in 1995, today Project MUSE provides digital access to more than 600 scholarly journals and more than 36,000 monographs from 238 non-profit publishers to institutions worldwide.

Melanie Schaffner is director of sales and marketing for Project MUSE.

 

Wendy Queen appointed as the new Project MUSE Director

By Elizabeth Brown, Project MUSE staff

Cheers were heard when this announcement appeared last week on MUSE Commons, the Project MUSE blog.  Congratulations to our friend and colleague, Wendy Queen!

We are very pleased to announce the appointment of Wendy J. Queen as the new Director of Project MUSE. A 15-year veteran of the Johns Hopkins University Press, Wendy served as Deputy Director of MUSE beginning in 2014, prior to which she held progressive responsibilities including Associate Director, Publishing Technologies.

Wendy’s many activities in the scholarly publishing community include involvement in the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Association of American University Presses (AAUP). She has served on the COUNTER Board for over ten years, and is also a member of the North American Steering Group of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). Wendy was appointed Interim Director of Project MUSE in March 2015, and in April led MUSE’s largest event of the year, the Annual Publisher Meeting, expanded this year to include a 20th Anniversary celebration.

“Throughout her time with MUSE, Wendy has led efforts to consolidate our technology strengths, to regularize the ongoing development of platform functionality, and to streamline MUSE production workflows,” said Kathleen Keane, director of the JHU Press. “I am delighted to have her deep knowledge of the platform and her extensive experience with the needs of our many constituencies, from libraries and publishers to scholars and readers, brought to the task of leading the organization.”

“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to lead MUSE and continue the amazing work being done by the MUSE staff,” said Wendy.

Wendy began her career with JHU Press and Project MUSE as a web developer in 2000, working on the platform as it expanded to include content from numerous not-for-profit presses and journals beyond JHUP.  Eventually, Queen led a 15-person staff of technology and production professionals, whose accomplishments included the development of a critically important XML workflow for the journals content, and the integration of book content from the University Press Content Consortium (UPCC) into the MUSE platform. Wendy also led all of JHUP’s web development efforts for ten years, including publication of three online reference works.

Happy birthday, Emily Jordan Folger

Guest post by Stephen H. Grant

Emily Jordan was born in Ironton, Ohio on May 15, 1858. Following her two older sisters to Vassar College, she emerged a bluestocking: a refined lady with intellectual, scholarly, and literary interests. Emily’s Vassar 1879 class of 36 students elected her class president for life. Although her undergraduate scrapbook attests to a few dates with nearby West Pointers, she met her husband to be in Brooklyn at a literary salon in the home of Charles Pratt, founder of the Pratt Institute. Henry Folger also graduated in 1879, from Amherst College, where he roomed with Charles Pratt Jr. Both Emily and Henry earned Phi Beta Kappa keys. Neither Emily’s nor Henry’s parents attended college.

Emily Jordan, 1879

Emily took one of the few jobs open to young women, teaching. She taught in the collegiate department at the Nassau Institute—Miss Hotchkiss’s school for young ladies—in Brooklyn. When she married Henry in 1885, she was obliged to give up her teaching job. For the next half century, Emily served as a full partner in one of the most prodigious literary feats of all time: assembling the largest collection of Shakespeare in the world.

Henry Folger corresponded with 600 booksellers, 150 in London alone. The underground vault of the Folger Shakespeare Library contains 258 linear feet of auction catalogs which arrived at Henry’s office, 26 Broadway in Manhattan, home of the Standard Oil Company where he worked for five decades. When he brought the catalogs home to Emily in their Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone, her job was to identify the items she wanted in their collection. Henry put together a bid list, and paid for the winning lots from his oil fortune. Then Emily wrote up each item for the card catalog, developing writer’s cramp along the way.

A childless couple, the Folgers were singlemindedly devoted to the Bard. They received family only twice a year: Thanksgiving and January 1. Nieces remember that on these sparse occasions, their aunt expected them to recite poetry and rewarded them with a book with a five-dollar bill tucked inside. The Folgers attended no social events nor hosted any business dinners. When they went on vacation in Virginia, they lugged a special travel card catalog around with them. On their numerous voyages to England, they attended Shakespeare performances, went book hunting, and brought back poppy seeds from Stratford-upon-Avon.

Emily was a close adviser to her husband in the acquisition of eighty-two Shakespeare First Folios, the 1623 compilation of thirty-six plays, eighteen of which might have been lost to the world as they had not been printed. Emily had earned a masters degree at Vassar with a thesis on “The True Text of Shakespeare,” pointing to the 1623 publication as the most authoritative edition of the plays. Emily kept a fascinating play diary, where she wrote pages and pages of detail concerning the 125 Shakespeare plays she saw in her lifetime.

In 1919, the Folgers started buying up the fourteen redbrick rowhouses two blocks from the U.S. Capitol on land they had identified for a permanent repository for their Shakespeare collection. Each of the deeds noted Emily Jordan Folger as owner. She also held in her name bank vault and storage warehouse accounts where they stored books, manuscripts, playbills, prints, engravings, paintings, pieces of furniture, porcelain, armor, maps, charts, phonograph records, costumes, globes, musical instruments, and curios. Henry stayed beneath the radar.

In the late 1920s the Folgers continued their aggressive buying of Shakespeare items, but made the time to help design what would become the Folger Shakespeare Library with French-born architect, Paul Philippe Cret. They selected quotations to be etched in stone. They identified scenes from Shakespeare’s plays for relief sculptures on the library façade.

Emily Jordan Folger, 1931

It was Emily’s Day on April 23, 1932, the 368th celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, when, wearing a shoulder corsage of orchids, and lilies of the valley over her academic robe, she turned over the keys of the Folger Shakespeare Library to the chairman of the board of Amherst College, who was responsible for the administration of the Folger. Henry was not present. He had died suddenly two weeks after the cornerstone was laid. He had never seen one stone of his library. He had never seen all his books and Shakespeare treasures assembled together under one roof. Seamlessly, Emily took over the mantle to make the research library a reality. She died in 1936. The Folgers’ ashes are in urns behind a bronze plaque in the reading room. The Folger is a library, a theatre, and a mausoleum.

Stephen H. Grant is the author of Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, published by Johns Hopkins. He is a senior fellow at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and the author of Peter Strickland: New London Shipmaster, Boston Merchant, First Consul to Senegal.