a thrilling adventure.

congratulations on it. >> guest: thank you. coming for me that's praise indeed traded. >> host: you are kind indeed. talk about the subtitle in your book if i may quote henry folger's obsessive hunt for shakespeare's first folio. i think it might be helpful originally to talk about these two men the context of their times. of course they were defying me two men both alike in dignity to quote from shakespeare but separated by 400 years and the atlantic ocean very different that they shared one thing, a

shakespeare wrote his plays seven years after he died. two of his friends decided to create a memorial volume to him and collected all of that they had available and published 36 have been known 38 plays that shakespeare had written and the two men are connected across time and across the ocean and

it's the book that saved half of shakespeare's plays from obscurity became a fetish object for collectors and henry folger chairman of the editorial company wanted to own every known copy of his first olio. >> host: i thought of the gilded age is something of a very sacred term but in fact it was mark twain who coined the term and he was anything but complementary about those who lived in the gilded age. >> guest: he was quite pejorative about it and impart the question is what the new wealthy did to display their wealth. they had these magnificent mansions in new york and they had collections of art and books as well create they threw cash around europe and bought up european treasures and brought them back to the states. henry folger was quite different

than most of the gilded age characters that we know of jpmorgan, henry huntington and the like. he was quiet, unassuming, came from very modest means. work his way up the run up the ladder at standard oil company but most of all he never built himself a mansion. he never owned a house until he retired from standard oil. he was in a rented house in brooklyn with rented furniture. lived a very modest life and kept secret his successive passion for collecting. >> host: he probably could have built a bigger house if he didn't spend so much money on the menu scripts. >> guest: undoubtedly that is true but he displayed some of his artwork at his home but most of the works that he did come up looks, manuscripts, musical scores, musical instruments costumes and anything related to

shakespeare he looked at he studied and then when the house was full to the brim he would take them down into the basement wrapped them up and put them in a box and ship the box off to a warehouse. i have looked at receipt or storage fees for 30 years for some of the rooms that he rented so one by one he would fill up these warehouse rims with his treasures make an inventory, make a note of which boxes in which remand over 30 years accumulated room after room and a storehouse is semper and and manhattan. >> host: there is a tv show called porters and it wouldn't relate him to doubt that there is little of that in him.

>> guest: if it interferes with your normal living, while henry folger certainly acquired things on the same scale only the things he acquired are very valuable and interesting so we don't call him a hoarder. >> host: not little boxes from kentucky fried chicken from 10 years ago. you have a relationship with the collector as well. your husband, james wants in a well-known author and it did of collect your of other memorabilia. >> guest: a bit of the collector is an understatement. part of my research on henry folger wasn't warmed by the fact that i did it with the collector and he has been collecting objects, manuscripts related to lincoln since he was 10 years old. he has amassed an enormous collection that i have not seen the full extent of yet because like henry james has had to put

many of his objects into storage because there is no room for them. he has storage facilities in more than one state to. >> host: that you know about. >> guest: that i know of, right. >> host: james has a number of looks that particularly one of my favorites is manhunt the manhunt for john wilkes-booth after the lincoln assassination but let's go back in time a little further than that at the first folio. could you talk about what a folio is alex it's a phrase some of your readers may not need familiar with and the two men you referred to earlier the saviors. >> guest: sure. a folio refers to the size of the book. it's very large 13x8 depending on how it's been shaped.

like a "life" magazine. >> host: but twice that. >> guest: that book would be closer to something that would be half the size of a folio. and what made it interesting was the folio sized conveys a gravitas of the work and at an prior the first folio shakespeare that size had been reserved for political and religious tracts of gravity. not fiction, not literature and certainly not plays which were not regarded as literature. they were regarded as a femoral amusements for the masses. the first folio was a memorial volume that two of shakespeare's friend john hemming and henry khan dell put together is a tribute to their deceased friend. >> host: how long before had he passed away? >> guest: he died in 1615 in the first folio was published in

1623 so the i.d. badge idea percolated after shakespeare's death at which time by the time of shakespeare's death only half of his plays have been published so they remained half that would not have been known to history had these two men not said put these all together in one volume and save them for posterity. many of the manuscripts possibly the only copies of the manuscripts had gone up in flames at the globe theater in 1613. >> host: what are her thick story. imagine what the world would have had if that didn't happen. talk about how that fire them about in berman is sent out some tragedies we have had in contemporary america. >> guest: first folio said had a history of fire but more on that a little bit later. the globe theater was like the

theaters in london trying to attract patrons. they held 1500

under american copyright law once an about the create something she owns the right to that. and upon their death the state would get that property, the value but shakespeare had licensed or sold the works to other people? >> guest: there was not copywriting great written until 1709, long after that so the way plays were paid for was the theater companies brought them out right. the globe theater company would have paid for the place and they would have had the rights both to perform or publish.

>> host: they could have presumably sold it. >> guest: mostly what they did was in fact exclusively but they did was they held them very closely. there was a single copy under lock and key at the theater for someone who is in charge of those manuscripts because they feared that other theater companies would get copies of them and take them out to other theaters and perform the place and not pay them any royalties them any row two so they figured we have the rights to hamlet we want to have the only copy and we don't want other companies performing hamlet. >> host: the movie shakespeare in love which contains some accuracy a huge amount of rivalry between the players of the theatrical companies a bit of play but am perhaps i was exaggerated in the film but we know it was popular entertainment extremely rivalrous. >> guest: there was a lot of competition among the theater companies.

by the end of shakespeare's career he retires back to stratford in 1511. by that time there are two major theater companies left in london and part of the reason for that relates back to the puritans prohibiting the production of plays. they didn't literally shut the theaters down but that's also demonstrated in shakespeare in love after the rebels shut the theater either for plays or later the puritans would say plays were an abomination against god pretending to be something they weren't and with men playing the parts of women. they were even more upset about that. >> host: including that line that woman is a woman. >> guest: that's right. >> host: i was also fascinated as a armor business journalist and i covered the graphic arts industry to learn about jaggard the blind printer.

fascinating. how the first folio was instructed. only 900 pages. paper was a problem. talk a little about that. >> guest: let me start at the end of the story. without many copies of the first folio to compare it's very difficult to draw the inference about how the book was actually printed. having many copies available to compare side-by-side helps figure out how the copy is printed. alone in the short of it is which by the way is a phrase from shakespeare is that the book was printed from the inside out. you didn't print print page one and then page two and page three. you printed them in little outlets and you started in the middle of the book at and then you set the type moving from the inside out. very hard to understand that i will explain it in the book. this meant two things. one was that you the printer

had to estimate how much tax would hit on the page to fit in this book would exactly if he had too much room not a problem you could add a printer and you could virtually doublespaced the text. that wasn't a problem. if you ran out of space on the other hand you might have to print for poetry as prose. you might have to cut a line from the speech of the bard to make the text fit. >> host: the type the typesetter says that's the last chapter and has to go. >> guest: it doesn't fit. today if you are using microsoft word you would hit justify and everything would fit into the space you are allotted. >> host: one thing i'm curious about today we have hard book in paperback veaux and we have e-books enduring as long as there are bits and bytes but the

paper in many of today's books not high-quality or of literary art volumes but it doesn't last very long. talk about the paper and we will talk or about the present-day collection of the folios but talk about if you would what is the paper made of? will it be in danger in five years, 10 years, 100 years? >> guest: the answer is the i, the paper that was used for printing the first folio was high-quality from normandie france. that's where the best paper came from. that is what jaggard bost used in printing their first folio and part of that was to say this is something important, something special. something like a paperback book a quarter sized which would be half the size would have been printed on lower-quality paper. it would have been more riddle

and acidic and more likely to degrade which is why quarter sized leis are much more prayer. and the folios have survived with pretty good numbers. they suffered hazards of time, fire insects, people. people tearing plays out because it's more convenient to be able to carry one play around but all things considered a pretty good number of them have survived. >> host: one thing i found fascinating is this is a visit. jaggard wasn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart. he had to estimate if it made sense to print axe number y number. how did they get into the stream of commerce? >> guest: they were sold mostly out of the printer shop.

>> host: so printer/bookseller. >> guest: printer/oak cellar and all of the printing the book selling in the paper around st. paul's cathedral in london. it would have been all of the bookshops. that was in part geographic access but in part planned by the crown because the crown wanted to know always been printed and what ideas were being disseminated so not only the printing presses but the booksellers would have been under the watchful eye of the crown. >> host: what would a first folio cost? >> guest: at time of publication would have cost a pound which is they have a sum of money. a quarter sized by contrast for a single play might have cost five or 6p so much cheaper.

posted the first copy of the press is the same as the 10,000th copy off the press. is that because of the late or if they construction of the book itself? >> one is that corrections to the attacks were made while printing was going on. so you might be printing and page 64 for copy number 64 the preacher comes over and pulls a proof sheet off the press and that make corrections to it rated as the type reset to make those corrections of misspellings. sometimes we put the actor's name instead of the name of the character so we have to change that on the fly. the net through the sheet that was the other pages and later collated into copies.

the new pages that were printed off would have the correct version so for every page there was a single proof sheet, some uncorrected pages and some corrected versions so if you multiply that by 900 pages 500 times every copy is slightly different. >> host: so was jaggard the one overseeing that? >> guest: hemings and -- were beforehand so they would have taken the sources available to them the already printed or already published versions of the plays that had been available. they edited them. they acted a new place with shakespeare and have been friends with him for a long time so they knew so they could look at for example one of the cordoz of hamlet and edit it into what

we know from the first folio. they would use manuscripts that they would have had available to them as members of the theater company and their memorial reek creations would have been and how they had edited essentially these plays. once the manuscripts were transcribed probably by ralph crane they got to the printer shop and then it was probably not so much he who is was blind at this time but his son who would have done the corrections. >> host: now what i'm thinking up his shakespeare to my surprise did not really become popular until sometime after his death. it was well-known he was a playwright of course and people enjoyed his work but it was 140

years until his popularity began to soar. what happened to the first folio's? were they marginalize or do people recognize some babies would be truly valuable? >> guest: i don't know that collectors are they actors are the producers. someday people will recognize how great this is. in fact over that. of time we have the english civil wars in which the puritans took over parliament. and they prohibited plays which meant there were no new place being written and old plays were not being performed so was quite some time after the restoration that shakespeare's plays came back to station by then public's taste to change a little bit. the producers of the play start to change the ending. >> host: i've had several movies made in hollywood that i know how that works.

>> guest: victorious in the end. >> host: with a machine gun. >> guest: with a machine gun right. david berek was a very well-known traffic actor. he edited the play himself producing them in london. for example romario and juliette he produced with happy endings are sad endings, you imagine? i think he cut two acts. >> host: the six tonight i believe. >> guest: the six tonight. by the time we get to 150 years after shakespeare's death the play was quite different than what we remember. it's by going back to the first folio that we have a good idea of how they would have been

performed at the time shakespeare was still alive. >> host: this brings up an interesting point primarily the first folio but there were other folios as well. i found it -- dating it was the third folio all of a sudden you see a copy of the third folio and open it up in seven new place only one of which was apparently shakespeare. where did the others come from and talk a little bit about the other folios. >> guest: they were for folios altogether, like four editions. each of them got further and further away from the additional text as hemings rincon del had edited the plays so they would have acted in these plays. there are hundreds of mistakes introduced into later folios and the first folio sells out in nine years. it is produced and by the fourth they add these plays to which you referred.

imagine if i could dig into my attic and say i want a manuscript of a fourth novel, a fifth novel and 20 years posthumously i've publish her work. they thought they could make a little extra money by saying the portfolio is better than the first. >> will talk about henry folgers acquisition but they must have had some intrinsic value someone who would want to have the whole panoply if possible. >> guest: there are collectors like huntington and folger who wanted to own

talk a little bit about that because people do find it fascinating. >> guest: it's called the authorship did shakespeare

really write those plays and it's a group of people who have various candidates for whom they believe actually wrote the plays better tribute to shakespeare and there are a few things that are important. one is in his lifetime nobody doubted that shakespeare had written it. 150 years before someone said that this man write the play write the play's? at the go back a luminous evidence. there are no grammar school records that show that he went to grammar school there. he didn't go to university and britain is plays without a university education. the earl of oxford is one of the candidates and christopher marlowe is another and francis bacon was the most popular. julia bacon in the 1800's wrote a book purporting that francis bacon had written, no relation to her by the way had written a

place in there have not been anyone named william shakespeare. ms. begin had an interesting story of her own. she went to angle that supposedly to research the authorship question. she didn't ask to do any research. she went to the town and observed the atmosphere but didn't do any interviewing. >> host: fiction writers do that a lot. >> guest: just to go there and explore the atmosphere. she didn't end so well how ever her book had been written by nathaniel hawthorne that he regretted for the rest of his life that he written the introduction because he hadn't read the book. she ended up in an insane asylum at the end of her life. that the alone doesn't mean that her hypothesis was incorrect however we have a lot of evidence that shakespeare existed and lived in london. he wrote plays. he was a contemporary of playwright fellow wrote about

him as a playwright. >> host: he acted in the plays. >> guest: he acted in the place. the english were tremendously accurate recordkeepers and at a record of not only what plays were performed of course but you had written the plays and who had acted in them and shakespeare is mentioned in their dozens of times so elizabeth and james queen elizabeth and james the first would have known who shakespeare was in his place they were and are assisting about the white devil writing about his friend william shakespeare play right and william johnson comic writer at the time wrote in the first folio and elsewhere compliments about his friend william shakespeare. we have a lot of information about connecting shakespeare to the plays. >> host: i have to point out my cousin who is an avid conspiracists and he was a as

well that he died before macbeth was performed before "the tempest"" henry viii and several others as well. he said edward t. bear could have written them and didn't. >> guest: that showed amazing amazing -- that he continued to have plays published years after he died he. >> host: very smart that please go ahead. >> guest: you mentioned macbeth create the most important feature of the first folio is that it's taken shakespeare's plays from extinction. from that record we have diaries about what plays we have copies of and by the time shakespeare had died only half of the plays have been published and were secured. not 100% secure from being

extinct but it was hemings and condell to publish the other half of the plays and arguably without that look the plays would have been lost to history plays like mike bass. there would have never been tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow. no roslyn, no tempest no prospero no julius caesar no anthony and cleopatra and on and on so some of the most important plays we know from shakespeare would have macbeth. they are the unsung heroes of english literature. >> host: don't they have one picture of shakespeare? >> guest: we do. there are two images of shakespeare. one is made up of plaster that is in the stratford on avon but

that was commissioned after shakespeare's death although it was seen by his family members saying that's not what he looked like. hemings and condell -- a flemish and by the way this is the first time the author's picture was on the title page in such a prominent position. they would have provided some kind of secondary sketcher painting and would have been great staff and shown at two hemings and condell and they could have sat a little more hair, little less hair or a mustache or whatever it was. >> host: like a police sketch artist. >> guest: like a police sketch artist. it would be really hard to erase from my copper engraving but at least hemings and condell who did no shakespeare would have

seen it and could have said that's not what it looks like at all. >> host: we even talking about england and going across the pond of that, of course shakespearean theater in general did not catch on quite as much" the old days until much later. i have this wonderful quote from your book about the increased matter, persons who bankrupted with much difficulty redeemed. it took a little while for shakespeare to get voting in america. how long did that take? >> guest: takes about a century and for all of the same reasons that some of the plays would have disappeared in england and that is the puritans who had shut down the production of plays in england were the ones who came to the colonies and they would not allow place to be produced here it there. it took about a century before shakespeare started to become on the frontier and perform.

>> host: talk about the confluence of william shakespeare and henry folger. when did he become interested and wednesday really start to get an inkling that i need to possess this folio? >> guest: it happened as many collectors over period of time. it started he was studying the play at amherst college. he heard ralph waldo emerson deliver a lecture and emerson read emerson's lecture on shakespeare and thought this warrants closer study and for the rest of his life he read the play. they affected him personally. he's not shakespeare had really captured modern man and amazingly modern man is not that different in the 1880s than he is 400 years later or earlier. the plays inform him about love

and life jealousy. as they do us all. part one is he really likes the plays in part to once he has a little bit of income in his pocket he started to collect copies of the folio and achievements of the first one he acquires at the auction house in new york. that does hammer down at $170.50 and he has to pay for that over time. he doesn't have enough money to pay for that. >> host: we know he was in law school as well and while he was in law school he had his law books and reading fiction and often an author have been influenced by shakespeare. >> host: . >> guest: carlisle. >> host: when he acquired his fourth folio was he indeed a student or was he working at that point? >> guest: he was already working but he was also known to

carry around copies of the play in his pocket and honest time and street cart knowing back and forth between brooklyn and lower manhattan he would have been reading the shakespeare plays. he and his wife emily also went to many shakespeare performances in new york so he enjoyed watching the plays reading the plays and eventually he encountered scholars once he was an established collector. he would write back and forthwith some of the shakespeare scholars to discuss how the part was performed and how strong was lee or in the scene. >> host: definitely more than just possessing. he was in baltimore whole milieu of the shakes. world from the portfolios are the full list today acting to the theater production and so on. talk about one of mysterious acquisitions and his life, his first folio. we don't know a lot about that duly? >> guest: ironically for a man who saved thousands upon thousands of letters over 40 or

50 years he was writing we know very little about the first acquisition. around 1881 to 1883 we know his condition that they don't have a record of how much he paid for it for example. >> host: now i was absolutely enthralled with your description of the rare manuscript collection of the gilded age presumably much of it still here today. people would want in unsophisticated manuscript we find disparaging terms elsewhere but certainly not to the manuscripts. talk a little about that if you will. >> guest: sure. the first folio is really exceptional in the book collection world and data copy that is missing place, missing pages damage in a number of ways missing original title page missing a cover, and bad shape.

it's still desirable to collectors and if you have that for example a manuscript of jack london's white fang you probably wouldn't be interested if it's missing pages or you would probably not be interested in that as a collector. the first folio's exceptional and that collectors want doesn't matter what the condition is. they want copies now matter where they are added a little bit of a fetish object also as they said before although folger was incredibly inquisitive and wanted everyone of these copies it was not just a fetish object. he actually did read the book. >> host: in one of your wonderful -- i can't remember what publication at once but basically three men and a woman and we have to thank for this

wonderful -- and of course henry folger but his wife emily who you refer to. she was edged a mental in the collection process. >> guest: she was and the review was from "the new york times" and hemings and condell without them editing the plays we would not know half of the plays that we do today. emily was the unsung hero for two reasons. one is if you are an obsessive collector and you are running the world's largest corporation during the day and you come home at night and you sift through catalogs and even when you go on vacation you bring your inventory of your collection with you just in case something comes up and you need to find out if you have a better copy or an inferior copy and should you order it it's very helpful to have someone who shares that passion with you. otherwise it interferes with your life. she shared his passion both for

shakespeare. she had written her masters thesis on shakespeare. she was not a dilettante and she also participated on a daily basis in going through the catalogs and making them the tories of what was in the collection and suggesting to henry what it was they should buy and attended many of the performances of plays and kept a diary of that as well. that made her an exceptional partner in this pursuit of shakespeare and henry lucked out in this as lily was very compatible with him on that. secondly at the time that henry died in 1930 the stock market had already crashed in october october 29 and the endowment he planned to leave behind to fund the library had been cut by 40%. had emily not been as generous with her own money and the light bird were guarded and completed

so after his death his finances were not as generous as henry had expected they would need and without families participating in a giving her money to the building of the library it would not have open. >> host: my impression was that when henry and emily got started in this they were more devoted to the folio's and the shakespeare llama itself into the art of collecting. they made some mistakes. he had some disappointments in fact didn't he try to talk rockefeller into purchasing a huge body of work i library of work and suggesting rockefeller to defray the cost into the publishing world to sell little pocketbooks of these which did not work out. talk about how he stumbled a little bit. just go that was the case of a man -- >> guest: that was the case of a man who is talented and

brinksmanship but couldn't scrape together the money to buy this entire collection that had gone up for sale. he wrote a letter and we don't know the senator rockefeller but i think he spoke to him about it saying hey you have just endowed the university of chicago. it's not a collection of first folio's. maybe the university of chicago would like to have a great collection of shakespeare llama and i would be willing to go over the valuable pieces in what should be your reduced in you could sell them in defray the cost of the collection. rockefeller did not die the collection. >> host: went to competitor. >> guest: ultimately some of that collection did get to folger so there's a financial panic and suffers the loss of

the tremendous collection shakespeare to henry huntington and he says if i can't get the best i'm going to give up the shakespeare altogether. ultimately henry folger did get some of that collection. >> host: one of the most thrilling accounts in your book is of a particular manuscript and if i may quote it's been described as the single most valuable and desirable copy of the first folio in the world that was augustine vincent the contemporary of jaggard who apparently gave him a copy in person and it ended up in the collection of -- conning. >> guest: con for sure. >> host: data acquisition and it is true ups and downs. could you talk about that? >> guest: folger became aware of the superb copy complete with

all the original leaves from one copy of the folio that had not even supplied from another copy. it was very tall and had part of its original 17th century cover with in the modern cover that had been put on it and we knew who owned it from the get-go so it was the only presentation copy that we know of of the folio given to the printer by his friend. >> host: what is presentation copy referred to? >> guest: that we know it either the author or the publisher gets a copy to a specific version and the two that we know of augustine vincent and if you look at the end papers at the book has that presentation copy with the inscription by the printer in

that. the other presentation copy would have gone through the library at oxford which was mandated essentially the same way. >> host: go on about the acquisition. >> guest: folger becomes aware of this copy from an english shakespeare scholar and bad for four years chases after the copy and find out how much this guy wants for the superb copy, lot of money. folger says well could i buy it over time? could i look at it on approval? that's a lot of money about the time he has made up his mind and maybe have been able to scrape together the financial wherewithal to buy the folly and the englishman who owned the copy said well i've changed my mind. i would rather have the look to look at than a check but if you write to me once a year around

christmastime asked me if i have changed my mind. >> host: asking folger and putting the onus on him. >> guest: genuflected asked me if i'm ready to sell my book are not in that at some point he writes to folger and says someone else's offered me some money for this and that information gets back to folger and he said if you'd read willing to offer me 10,000 pounds which was a record price for a book at the time and folger again had perhaps financial difficulty in getting the money together at once can i pay for overtime, almost lost it but in the end -- >> host: when you follow the story and in the book your palms are sweaty. snatched away and he has the opportunity to give it up again.

>> guest: the idea was to have equal in the same right that henry did which is you didn't know whether he would end up at the copier.. i at least was rooting for him that he would ultimately get the copy. >> host: that rings up an interesting point. there's so much to talk about that as i was reading the book i initial reaction this is their star playwright and an upstart yankee who bring up the first folio's. would there never been a backlash? i believe there was some backlash and that was the manuscript you were referring to come is that right? >> guest: it happens twice. they're sick copy this owned by the library and when they bosnian acquired the second folio pages cited to sell their first folio so it's gone and years later some collector comes to the bosnian and ask if they

can verify if this is the first folio. the chain would have been attached to a shelf so somebody could have read the book but then we have to stand there and read it and couldn't steal it. this is unique to the copies of the bosnian library bound by man man --. >> host: we have had interesting names in our conversation today. >> guest: the sharp version is the bosnian wants to buy the copy back. the collector named the price of 2000 pounds and folger said where do i send the check? i want to buy that copy. i will take a right now and meanwhile the bosnian was trying to raise money to bring it back to its own collection and articles appeared in the newspaper and the times literary supplement and notes and queries

queries. want anybody funny if the money to buy this unique -- oxford manner not ton

i think you were a protégé of frank mccourt were you not? one of my favorite writers sure. talk a little bit about that and how you came to write the book. >> guest: my father's english and he joined the navy at age 17 and he and his brother. he by the way took me to stratford when i was a teenager. >> host: is that when the bug caught you? >> guest: was probably the colonel. the storytelling came from frank mccourt and his mentor who was one of my high school teachers who taught me shakespeare.

>> guest: henry and his wife emily were friends with scholar henry for a nap at the university of pennsylvania. he would ask him how many copies you have or do you have a copy of this that i can look at and he would say i can't yet to it. dozens of scholars worked in and said you have this copy of hamlet and can have a look at it and he would say sorry it's all packed away. the idea came to him certainly by the turn-of-the-century he should build a available to scholars. >> host: one question if i may interrupt to the other catalog entity know everything he had? >> guest: the answer is no. emily catalog all of the books. she hand wrote index cards with the publication was in with the

condition was and where they bought it and what the price was was. but he didn't catalog everything. in part because it arrived in such great volumes. he would buy a watercolor paintings by the grateful and it was not all catalog. in fact there are so many individual items at the folger library that they are all in catalogs today. >> host: we have this mass of material so please go on. >> guest: henry and emily considered building a library in new york city but with their relatively modest endowment they could not afford real estate there some things never change. emily group in washington d.c. and her father worked for the abraham lincoln treasury. she was familiar with washington and want on one of their train trips were vacation they stop by and they looked around at the property on capitol hill and they said this would be a good place. i wonder how much it would cost

to do that. the end of the story as they bought the property here and were able to build the library with the money that they had. >> host: there was a little chum about the property wasn't there? >> guest: took a total of nine years to buy up the 13 townhomes between second and third. by the time he has finished acquiring all the properties the congress had made a decision to expand the library of congress which was across the street and they wanted imminent domain to take a property that henry had just acquired. in the newspaper congress is going to take the property so he enlisted the help of the library of congress and this is after all the president of standard oil that is writing a note in saying hey are you going to take this property? i won't build a library if you were going to take the property in the library of congress named

putnam helped him deal with congress and carving out the parcel that he had purchased from acquisition that the library of congress mates of the library of congress expansion building is behind the library. >> host: they managed to work it out. i would encourage viewers to go there. i've been there many times and have a wonderful gift shop in which i've wakako look and host of the medieval banquet for 40 or 50 people. it was a great time. we had a great time doing that. we are almost out of time that i have a question for you. you describe yourself for copyright in the back of the book describes you as obsessive and mirroring henry folger of course. how many expand first folio's are there accounted for both of the folder library within henry's collection and also around the world?

>> guest: there are 82 copies of the folder library. the next largest collection for comparison because it makes a university of japan and that is 12. the next largest after that is the british library and that is five so it's not common for people to have a dozen or more copies of her first folio. we know as of november of last year we know of 244 copies of the 750 we think were originally depicted. >> host: there is up there somewhere at first folio for you. >> guest: that would be delightful. i could afford the first page of a folio. there are some site that would lead me to the lost manuscripts of shakes. there are a few that he brought that we don't have copies of. >> host: are they still being discovered? is that possible?

>> guest: in fact no manuscripts have been discovered. now if single manuscript and shakespeare's hand but copies of the first folio have personally gone for between five and $6.5 million so many librarians flipped through their amatory and say maybe i have one out there as well and in fact the french university near l.a. discovered a copy and have it verified that is number 245. >> host: another exciting. i see our time is up and i wish you luck in your quest. andrea mays it was so nice talking to you. >> guest: thank you. >> that was "after words" booktv's signature program which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists public policymakers and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on book tv at 10:00 p.m. on

saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday and 12:00 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" on line. go to book tv.oregon click on "after words" in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. ..

>> "after words" airs on booktv every saturday at 10 p.m. and sunday at 9 p.m. eastern. you can watch all previous "after words" programs on our web site, booktv.org. >> booktv continues now with martin greenfield. he talks about his memoir which chronicles his experiences as a prisoner in auschwitz during world war ii to his current occupation as a tailor for several u.s. presidents and other celebrities. [inaudible conversations]