but it is the preeminent book that provides the history of fort ticonderoga. my last book on related to my district, but i try to and i'm interested in books a powerful women in the united states history recently walk into a bookstore and saw the autobiography of helen keller the story of my life but was quite a long time ago. i remember reading the miracle worker in language class. looking forward to reading her story of her life. >> book tv wants to no what your reading. tweet us your answer or post it on our facebook page >> next entry amaze recounts early 20th century industrialist henry folgers pursuit. ..

to talk about the two men in the context of their times. of course they were two men both alike in dignity and yet separated by 400 years in the atlantic ocean. but they shared one thing, a passion for collect the good but to put them in the context of their lives if you lead, please. >> sure, shakespeare was writing around the 1600s.

his life was 20 years before, 20 years after the 1600. during the reign of elizabeth and james the first he was a well-known playwright poet. he wrote sonnet and he was also a businessman. he was a shareholder in london and land owner very well-known known is time for being a playwright and businessmen. henry folger was the chairman of the board of the largest corporation in the world at the time as well during the gilded age. shakespeare wrote these plays years after he died two of his friends decided to create a memorial volume and collected all of the 36 nodes 38:00 p.m.

the two men are connect to across time and notion in the book is saved from obscurity became a fetish object for collect yours and henry folger wanted to own every known copy of the first folio. >> host: something interesting yearbook, i thought of the gilded age is a very sacred term referring to it that way. it was mark twain who coined the term and he was anything but complementary about those who lived in the gilded age. >> he was quite pejorative about it. in part the question is what the new wealth they did to display their wealth with magnificent mansions in new york with collections of art and books as

well. if your cash around europe and then brought them back to the state. henry folger was quite different than most of the gilded age characters we know of jpmorgan, henry huntington and the like. he was quiet unassuming, came from modest means worked his way up but most of all he never built himself a mansion. he never owned the house until he retired. he lives in a rented house in brooklyn and lived a very modest life and kept secret his obsessive passion. >> he could have built a bigger house if he didn't spend so much money on the manuscript. >> undoubtedly that is true. he displayed them of his artwork and he collect books,

manuscripts, musical scores and anything related to shakespeare. he started and when the house is full to the room he would take them into the basement, wrap them up and put them in a box and ship the box to a warehouse. i looked every states for storage fees for 30 years for some of the rooms he rented. one by one he would fill up warehouses rooms with his treasures, make an inventory and a note of which boxes in which room and over 30 years accumulated brewmaster room in brooklyn and manhattan. >> there is a tv show called quarters. there is a little element of that. >> if you are a person obsessed

with contemporary needs papers or magazines and stack them to where you have to wind your way through they have order and personality they certainly acquire things and so we called them >> to you as well. you want to talk a little about james swanson >> you are being kind to him. part of it was informed by the fact they do that but they collect their and he has been collecting objects, manuscripts and books related to lincoln since he was 10 years old and

he's amassed an enormous collection. like henry james has had to put many of his objects into storage because there was no room for them. he's got storage facilities in more than one state. >> james also is the author of a number of books but particularly one of my favorite is manhunt, the hunt for john wilkes booth after the lincoln assassination. let's go back a little further than not. the first folio is the two men are the saviors >> the folio refers to the size of the book. it's very large.

13 by eight depending how it's been shaped down. >> life a life magazine size. that is correct. that book would be closer to some thing called half the size. what made it interesting was some kind of the work in that. prior to and it's been reserved for political and religious tracts. not fiction, not literature and plays regarded as literature were regarded as amusements for the masses. two of shakespeare's friends

>> how long before he passed away. the first is published in 1623. the idea percolated about five years that are shakespeare's that, at which time only half of his place has been published. it would not have been known arguably had these two men not that both of these altogether and save them to your monies copies of the manuscripts >> talk about how that came about. it was somewhat interesting and bit reminiscent of some

tragedies in contemporary america. >> guest: they have had a history of fire but more on that later. and they tried to attract patrons. it held 1500 people. one of the way as they added special effects. one might have a good idea of let's use a real can. not computer-generated. they shot up the cannon upon the arrival of i think it was henry the eighth century to play and the cannon fodder that to end the car fire and burned to the ground in two hours. the great fire of london is several years later 1666.

at that time the government had enough and that outlawed it until 1994 when the restoration was completed. [inaudible] >> guest: yes, right right. >> host: one thing i found interesting is a required them to get permission for some of these which i used apart this once an author creates something unless it's a work for hire. and upon their death to get the property for value. shakespeare has licensed or sold >> host: there was not copyright until 1709 daddy bought them out right. the company would have paid and

then they would have had the right to perform or to publish. >> guest: if they were found to do that. exclusively what they did is they held them closely. someone who is in charge of those manuscripts because they feared other companies would get copies and take them to other cities and perform the plays and not pay them royalties. they figured we've got the rights to hamlet. we were really copied their laid off on others -- >> host: i know from the movie shakespeare in love which has some historical actors, a huge amount of rivalry between the players and the theatrical companies rising to the level i was exaggerated in the film.

we know all those popular entertainment extremely rivalrous. >> host: a lot of competition among the theater companies. by the end of the career he retires back in 1611. by that time there's only two major companies left in london and part of the reason relates back to the puritans prohibiting the production of plays. they didn't literally shut the theater sound but that is also demonstrated in shakespearean love that shuts the theaters down. either played or later the puritans would say they were an abomination against god pretending to be some in there weren't. they were even more upset about it. >> guest: that woman is a woman.

>> host: i was also fascinated as a former business journalist and i covered the graphic art to learn about jagr, the blind printer. the portfolio was actually construct it. it was massive, 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 prepare it was hard to draw the inference of how the book was printed. having many copies available compares that it helps you figure out how the copy was printed. the lawn in the short of it, which by the way is the phrase from shakespeare is that the book was printed from the inside out. you didn't print page one and then page two admin page three. you printed them in little booklet and started at the middle of the booklet receptor

type moving from the inside out. very hard to understand and i'll explain it in the book. this meant two things. one was the printer had to estimate how much would fit on a page and fit this booklet if you have too much room, not such a big problem. something decorative. you could virtually doublespaced attacks. that wasn't a problem. if you ran out of space you might have to print poetry. you have to align from the speech in order to make the text fit into it. it doesn't fit. if you were on microsoft word you would have justified and everything would fit to this a serologic to it. >> host: one thing i'm curious

about. looks today, hardcover books paperback books e-books enduring a fondness for paper in many of today's books, not speaking of high-quality literary or art novels about the popular fiction it does not last very long. talk about the paper and we'll talk more the present-day collection of the folios. but talk about if you would want is this paper made of? will it endanger five years, 10 years, 100 years? >> guest: the answer is yes. the paper used for printing the first folio with high-quality rat paper from normandy, france. that is where it came from and that is what jagr used in printing the first folio. part of that was to convey the volume to say this is something important, something like a paperback book would be half the

size would have been printed on lower quality paper more brittle more acidic and more likely to disintegrate which is why it is much more rare. the folios have survived in pretty good numbers. people tearing plays out because it was more convenient. a pretty good number of them have survived. >> is a business. jagr wasn't doing us out of the business of his heart. he had to estimate if they made plans and then he had to sell them why someone had to sell them. how did they get into the stream

of commerce? >> they were sold mostly out of the printer shop. printer bookseller. also all of the printing, book selling paper warehouses would've been around st. paul's cathedral in london. square around st. paul's was printing what broadway is to theater. it would have been all of the bookshelves. that was in part geographic and impart land because the crown wanted to know what was in printed so not only the printing press as for the booksellers would have been under the watchful eye of the crown at st. paul. >> host: what would it have cost it the first time? >> guest: a ton of publication would've cost a pound which is a

hefty sum of money. a quarter sized by contrast for single play might have cost much cheaper. >> host: the first press copy of "the millionaire and the bard" is the same as the 10,000th copy >> there were some differences and variations because of the length different days for the construction of the book itself. >> host: two main reasons. the corrections were made while britain was going on. page 64 for copy number 64 the printer comes over for example sometimes they put the actor's name is edit the name name of the character written.

we had to correct that on the fly. the crew she could be stacked with the other pages and then that new pages would have a corrected version. every page had a single proof sheet, uncorrected page is and corrected virgins. tangerine as every copy is slightly different. >> host: had jack and taken over? >> guest: the work was primarily beforehand. already published version has been available in court and they added it then enact it in the days of shakespeare and have been friends for a long time. do the debt to hamline and said

now, that's not how it was. they added into the version we more commonly know. the manuscripts they would've had available as members of the theater company and their memorial recreation all would have been in how they added it essentially displays. they got to the printer shop and it was probably not so much i think who is blind at this time but would've done the corrections. >> host: what i am thinking of a shakespeare to my surprise did

not become hugely popular until sometime after his death. it was a well known it to be thin playwright of quarters and people enjoyed his work it was 140 years until the popularity began to soar. with a marginalized or do people truly recognize some day this deed a valuable book? >> guest: i don't know the collect yours are actors are producers at the time. someday people will recognize how great this is. in fact over that period of time we had the english civil wars which the puritans took over parliament and prohibited place or being produced which meant there were no new plays being heard but so is quite some time the shakespeare plays again come back to the stage in baghdad the public tastes have changed a little bit. the producers of the place start to change the ending.

>> host: i've had several movies made in hollywood. >> guest: hector prynne walks away with a machine gun. a particular actor on a very well-known tragic actor. he added that the plays themselves producing them in london, for example, romeo and juliet to produce ultimate night. you can imagine. and actor too kept it moving along. he cuts you ask to keep the narrative moving quickly. and so by the time we get to 150 years after shakespeare's death

come in the plays are quite different than what we remember. it is really by going back to rehab a good idea of how they would've been performed at the time shakespeare was still alive. >> host: this brings up an important point. their other folios as well that i found fascinating. all of a sudden one would be familiar and you would open in a band that the new plays only one of which was attributable to shakespeare. talk a little bit about the other folios. >> host: there were four altogether. each of them got further and further away from the original tax is the edited that the plays. it would have packed it in these plays and there were hundreds of mistakes introduced and essentially the first folios

fell out of nine years. they add the place to which you referred. imagine if i could dig into my attic and say i found the manuscript of harper lee's novel and 50 years posthumously or 20 years posthumous to publish them as her work. that was going on. they could make a little extra money by saying it's better than the first. by this one. >> host: we could talk about the acquisition at one point, but they must've had some intrinsic value. maybe the whole panoply of folios are possible. poster there were certain the collectors like huntington who wanted to how the complete set. most of those collectors wanted the really good quality copies of one of each. folger wanted every copy he could get his hands on.

good copy, bad copy it with graffiti and it, missing plays with torn pages, in fact ward holds an arresting outline of scissors or eyeglasses. he wanted them all. >> host: i have to bring up something. i'm not going to charge royalties for this however i should let you know my last name is jeffrey deaver. according to my family be untrue genealogists and the senate is oxford edward deaver called the antitrust guardian spirit is that the way to pronounce that? the conspiracy theorists who feel sort of a front man. i'm not going to hit you up for any royalties.

people do find it fascinating. >> host: bradley is called the authorship. as you say, there's a group of people with various candidates for whom they believed but the plays attributed to shakespeare. a few things are important to know. one is in its lifetime nobody got a shakespeare had written. it was 150 years before someone said i don't think this man wrote the plays. this voluminous evidence of even his existing there. there is no grammar schools that show he went there. he didn't go to university without a university education. the earl of oxford is one of the candidates. christopher marlowe is another. for instance plakon was most popular. in the mid-1800s he read a

book essentially reporting that francis bacon had written these plays and there hadn't been anyone named william shakespeare. 's bacon had an interesting story of her own. she went to england to research the authorship question. she didn't actually do any research. she went to the town and absorb the atmosphere but didn't do any interviewing. >> host: fiction writers do that a lot. >> guest: we go there and observed the atmosphere. she demands a well although her book had an introduction written by nathaniel hawthorne regretted the rest of his life had written the introduction. she ended up in an insane asylum at the red light and she had an interesting life on her own. that alone doesn't mean her hypothesis is correct. however, a lot of evidence that shakespeare existed.

he lived in london. he wrote plays. his contemporary playwright fellowes wrote about him as a playwright. he act within the play. the english were tremendously accurate recordkeepers. they would've kept a record of not only what was performed but who had written the plays they knew it at the end there were dozens of times. elizabeth and james the first would have known who shakespeare was, whose plays they were. the white devil writes about his gambling shakespeare play right and the comic writer at the time wrote in the press preface to the first folio and elsewhere compliments about his friend william shakespeare. we have a lot of information about connecting shakespeare. >> host: i did have to point out to my cousin who was an avid

conspiracists because of her namesake of course he was the dever does well that edward deaver die before but that was first performed before several other plays as well. he said he could have written them and have none under his bad or in a cot somewhere. >> host: very smart. >> guest: the most important feature is the shaved half of shakespeare's face from extinction. from that era we have records of about twice as many plays. by the time shakespeare had

died, only half of the plays had been published in worse -- were secure are not 100% sure for being extinct. i intend to publish the other half of these plays and without the book, those plays. ..

that was commissioned after shakespeare's death. although it was seen by family members who would've said that's not what you look like if it had been a problem. but they commissioned it can make an image which would be the topic of the first folio. by the way this is the first time the office picture was on the title page in such a prominent position. they would've provided some kind of secondary sources sketch or paint or something that we don't know. and then through that would've engraved it and showed it and they could've said a little more hair, unless there, bigger mustache, whatever it was. like a police sketch artist although they would have had to do not with the original source the engraver was working from

because it would be hard to the race from a copper engraving. at least those who did know shakespeare would've seen the image and could've said that's not what he looked like at all. house of representatives we been talking about england and the british isles. let's cross the pond. shakespeare and theater in general did not catch on quite as much through in colonial days until much later i have a quote from your book about puritan increased matter who said this persons bankrupted by stage with a cell phone and with much difficulty reading. it took a while for shakespeare to get something in some food in america. how long did that take? >> guest: it takes about a century. for almost the same reason some of the players would've disappeared in england and that is the curtains should shut down the production of place in england are the ones who came to the colonies. they would not allow place to be produced to either. it took about a century before

shakespeare started even at the frontier was read and perform. >> host: tells about the confluence of william shakespeare and henry folger. when did you become interested in wind did he really start to get an inkling that they need to possess this country i think it happened as with many collectors over a period of time. it started he was studying the place at amherst college. he heard ralph waldo emerson deliver a lecture and then became interested. emerson lecture on shakespeare thought this needs closest to the pin for the rest of his life he read the place. they affected him personally. he thought shakespeare had really captured modern man, and amazingly modern man is not that different in 1880 nhsn 400 years

later, i'm sorry, 400 years earlier. so the place inform him about love life, jealousy and competition as they do us all. part one is the really like the place. partitas once yet all, but of income in his pocket, he started to collect, the person he acquired had -- house of representatives what a name. >> guest: $107.50 and has to pay for the overtime. doesn't have enough money to pay for that. >> host: was at that point we knew what the law school. even while he was in law school could have his law books and reading action and often an author could have been influenced by shakespeare. >> guest: and carlyle. >> host: when he acquired his first, or fourth folio was he

indeed a state or was he working at that point? >> guest: he was already working but he was also known to carry around copies in his pocket. going back and forth between brooklyn and lower manhattan he was reading the shakespeare plays. he and his wife emily also intimate shakespeare performances in new york. he enjoyed watching reading the plays and eventually he encountered shakespeare scholars. once he was an established collected right back and forth with some of the shakespeare scholars and discussed attacks how this part was performed. post but this was more than just possessing an object. he was involved in the whole view of the shakespearean world from the portfolios or from the folios to the acting to the theater production of someone. talk about one of the mysteries acquisitions in his life his first first folio.

we do know a lot about that do we? >> guest: ironically for a man who saved many many scraps of paper spent thousands upon thousands of letters over 40 50 years that he was writing, we know very little about the very first acquisition. it was around 1881-1882. we know it's condition but we don't know, we don't have the record for how much he paid for it. >> host: i was enthralled with your description of rare manuscript election of the era the gilded age presumably much still continues today. people would want and a sophisticated manuscript, and unwashed and industry. we find disparaging terms elsewhere but certainly not for the manuscript. there were agents and spies and bald. >> guest: the first folio is exceptional in the book collecting world in that a copy that is missing plays, missing

pages, damage and number of ways, missing its original title page, missing the cover in bad shape. it is still desirable to collectors. if you had that for example, if manuscript of jack london's white fang you probably would not be interested in missing pages. you would probablyyou wouldyou would probably not be interested if would probably not the interest isbe interested in that as eclectic as the first folio is exceptional in that collectors want, doesn't matter what the condition is, the price changes. they want copies no matter where they are. they have a little bit of a fetish object although as i said before although folgers was incredibly inquisitive and he wanted everyone of these copies it was not just a fetish object he did read the place. >> host: in one of your wonderful selfridge's, one of the many stellar reviews, i

criminal publication it was, refer to the basically freemen and a woman who we have to thank for this wonderful -- and, of course, henry folger's but his wife emily do you refer to. she was instrumental in the collection process, wasn't she? >> guest: she was big the review was a "new york times." without editing the play we would not know half of the place that we do today. emily was the unsung hero for two reasons that one is if you're an obsessive collector and you are running the world's largest corporations during the day and to come home at night and you sift through catalogs and when you go on vacation to bring your inventory of your collection with you regis and case something comes up and need to find out if have a better copy or anticopy and should you order it, it's very helpful to have a spouse who shares that passion with you otherwise it may

interfere with your life. she shared his passion of for shakespeare. she had written her master's thesis on missing text of shakespeare. and she also participated on a daily basis and going to the catalogs and making inventories of what was in the collection and suggesting to an what it is they should buy the she also attended many of those performances and kept a diary of that as well. that made her an exceptional partner in his pursuit, so henry locked out. his wife was with very compatible with that. second of though is that the time henry died in 1930 the stock market had already crashed, october 29 and the valley of the doubt that he planned to leave behind to fund the library had been cut by about 40%. and have generally not been as

generous with their own money the library would not have been complete. after his death, the finances were not as generous as henry had expected that they would be, and without emily put this fading in and giving her money to the building of a library it would not have opened. house of representatives my impression was when henry and emily first got started in this he were more devoted to the folios itself than to the art of collecting. they made some mistakes. he had some disappointment. i think, didn't try to talk rockefeller into purchasing a huge body of work, and vibrant of work, and suggesting rockefeller than into the publishing world to sell little pocketbooks of these, which didn't work out. to talk about how he stumbled all of it how he got his feet

-- >> guest: that was the case of a man who is very talented but could not have script together the money to buy this entire collection pentagon up for sale. he wrote a letter. we don't know if he said this to rockefeller but i suspect he spoke to them about this, saying hey, you just didn't have the university of chicago yale has got a collection of first folio's, harvard has first folio's. maybe the universe of chicago like a great collection and to be willing to go to the collection with you and how you which of the most valuable pieces in which could be reproduced and you could sell that and defray the cost. that did not work. rockefeller did not buy that house of representatives and away to a competitor, and he was i assume a bit miffed about that. >> guest: yes. ultimately, some of the collection finally did get to folger. 1907% financial panic and he

suffers a loss of tremendous collection of shakespeare yana to henry hundred and he says if i can't get the best i'm going to give the shakespeare thing altogether and start selling off his collection as well until ultimately henry folger did get some of that collection. >> host: one of the most thrilling account in your book is of a particular manuscript and if i may quote it has been described as a think most valuable and desirable copy of the first folio in the world. that was augustine simpson. apparently august invents and contemporary who apparently handed him gave him a copy personally and it ended up in the collection of -- [inaudible] that's a menu could not make a.

that acquisition it is true ups and downs but could you talk about it? >> guest: sure. folger became aware of the existence of this superb copy complete with all the original leads from one copy of the folio. it had not been supplied from another topic briefing like that. it was very tall had a part of its original 17th century cover within the modern cover that has been put on it. and we knew who had counted from the get-go. it was the only presentation copy that we know of of shakespeare's first folio given by the printers house of representatives what does that refer to? >> guest: just that we know either the author or the publisher gives a copy to a specific person, and to that we know of one is to augustine

vincent, if you look at the into papers of the book that has that presentation copy with the inscription by the printer into. the other presentation copy would have gone to the library at oxford, which was mandated essentially the same way as -- house of representatives go on and talk specifically about -- >> guest: folger becomes aware of his copy because it was published in 1903 by an english shakespeare scholar, and then for four years he chases after the copy and find out how much is this a i want for the superb copy, a lot of money. folgers as well, could i buy it over time? could i look at it on approval? that's a lot of money. and by the time he's made up his mind and maybe been able to scrape together the financial wherewithal to buy the volume, the englishman who owns the copy says well, i changed my mind

that i'd rather have the book to look at then to check your but if you write to me once a year about christmas time asking if i changed my mind -- post by putting the onus on him. >> guest: that's correct. genuflect, as if i'm ready to sell my book or not. been at some point actually he writes to folger and says welcome some of those has offered me some money. he writes to both give and system else is offered the money for this and that information gets back to folger and he says if he was willing to offer me 10,000-pound which was a record price for a book at the time. and folger again had some perhaps in financial difficulty in getting all the money together once demurred all of it and cannot pay for overtime almost lost it but in the end did a 10,000 -- house of representatives your palms are sweating to see if -- others

opportunity to get it. >> guest: the idea was to have you go on the same ride again they did which was you either nobody can end up with a copy or not. it is suspenseful. i was always rooting for him that he would also may get a copy. >> host: that brings up an interesting point. we have so much to talk about but this was as i was reading the book my initial reaction, here are the brits and this is their boy, there started right and isn't upstart yankee grabbing all those first photos. there was some backlash i think i was manuscript you're referring to, is that right? >> guest: that happened twice. it is a copy that is owned by the bosnian library and when they acquired a subsequent folder, second or third point they decided to sell the first

folio surplus of its gone. and years later some collector comes in and as then can you verify that this is the first book with delicate this look at the unique cover which contain a half that a chamber concert and the chain what event attached to a shelf so that somebody could'vecouldhave read the book but that have to stand every. they could still. this is unique to these copies at the library all bound by a man named william wilder. another great english name. >> you have had some interesting things in our conversation today. >> guest: yes, there are. short version of the story is the bodleian library buys this back. 2000 pounds. folgers edward royce in the check? i want to buy that copy the i will pay it right at the meanwhile, the bodleian library was trying to raise money to buy

back for his own collection. and articles appeared in the newspaper and the times literary supplement and notes and notes and queries, book collecting world newspaper saying won't anybody pony up the money to buy this unique -- absolutely. were our, oxford we cannot pony up the money to buy this meant a cambridge man had given money, would argue? in one of the newspapers, the cartoon was published, a faceless million of because they did not put it was him who the american collector, anonymous, going to his book dealer in london. there was a portrait of someone like moneybags from the board game monopoly, a man clasping bags of cash and looking at english treasures. who is this faceless millionaire? there was a great deal of backlash patty's treasures were

being brought overseas. the second time it happened was following henry huntington's acquisition of blue boy and folgers acquisition of the vincent copy, cartoon appeared with goggles and with a blue boy under one arm and a dashing under the second arm and looking over at shakespeare's bones in his grave and thinking i'd like to bring those back to america as well. so this was -- >> host: sweet street press. >> guest: they were not happy with the americans with a lot of cash, and buying their cultural treasures and liberating books from the dusty libraries of the aristocrats and taking them back to the united states. >> host: our time is racing along. i can put it's gone by so quickly. we have many other shakespearean question but if you want to turn the tables just a bit. you can yuba county lovely dedication to your mother and your father if remember

correctly, who enlisted in his majesty's navy to defend shakespeare's england. i found that very touching the let's talk about your a little bit if you would, please. i know you have an economics degree, you teach economics know. i think you're a protégé of one of, well, my favorite writers. talk about that. and how you came to write the book. >> guest: my father is english and he joined the navy at age 17 anti-and his brother fought during world war ii. that's what the dedication comes from. he by the way to make it stratford upon avon when i was a teenager. >> host: is that when the bug can't you country probably the colonel. the storytelling came from frank mccourt and his mentor who is one of my high school teachers taught me shakespearean

literature he was a quintessential storyteller edited matter what it was about, he could tell a great yarn and taught us about how to develop dramatic tension and how to tell a good tale. >> host: as this book does come as a mentioned in my remarks, i have read so many reviews, all glowing it's called a page turner and really does. notwithstanding being a former attorney i am working on a law review when i was in school. i appreciate footnotes. you are as meticulous about footnotes as anything else. that did not affect the book. >> guest: thank you. >> host: one thing i would like to talk about, you alluded to it the features of my with folgers at all particular discussion or prior to reading the book they would think of of the folger library of course to imagine that all of that but how many times have shakespearean

didn't folger have toward the end of his life? he knew he wants them to home and how did the folger libra but it's interesting to could you tell us about that tragedy henry and his wife emily were friends with shakespeare scholar howard at university of pennsylvania. and it was he who suggested to him to come you should go to library. how many copies do you have? get a copy of this that i can look at quincy with a it's all the way in storage, i can't get to it. dozens of libraries as cultural to consent you have this copy can have a look at it? sorry, it's all packed away. the idea came to him certainly by the turn-of-the-century he should build a library and make this available to scholars. >> host: one question estimate interrupter if you have a catalog of you know everything he had? >> guest: the answer is no.

emily catalog all of the books. she wrote, and wrote index cards detailing what the publication was and what the condition was where they bought it, but the pricewith theprice wasn't so one. the index cards still exist. i didn't catalog everything. and in part because it started arriving in such great volumes they couldn't keep up with the. they would buy watercolor paintings by the boxful, by the great falls. it was not all catalog. in fact, there summon individual items at the folger library that they're still not all catalog today those back we have a mass of material. >> guest: they considered building the library in new york city, what with their modest, relatively modest endowment they cannot afford real estate there. some things never change. emily had gone up in washington, d.c. her father had worked for the abraham lincoln treasury and choose me with washington. on one of their train trips to

west virginia for vacation they stopped on and about at a profit on capital and they said this is a good place to do with how much it would cost? 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: a little drama about the property, was it there track to it was big it took a total of nine years to buy up all of the townhomes on these capitol street between second and third. by the time he is finished acquiring all of the properties, the congress had made a decision to expand the library of congress which was across the street and you're going to use eminent domain to take the property that hendry had just acquired. so imagine he spent nine years acquired the property look in the newspaper, congress is going to take the property. so he enlisted the help of of the library of congress. this is after all the president

of russia are you going to take this property? i will not want to build a library if you going to take and condemn the property. the library of congress, putnam helped him deal with congress in carving out the parcel that he had purchased from the acquisition of the library of congress they. to the library of congress expansion building is behind the folger library. >> host: they managed to work it out. i would encourage viewers to go there. i've been there many times. in fact, you have a wonderful gift shop which i bought a cook book and hosted a medieval banquet for about 40 or 50 people. it was a great time. turkey legs were thrown at each other. great time doing that. we are almost out of time but have a question. you describe is of our least copyright on the back of this book describes you as obsessive in mirroring henry folger of course. how many first folio's arthur

accounted for, both at the folger libra that is within henry's collection and elsewhere around the world? >> guest: there are 82 copies at the folger library. the next largest collection for comparison is that the universe in japan and that is 12. the next largest after that is at the british library and that is five. so it's not come for people to have a dozen or more copies of first folio. we know of as of november of last year we know 244 copies of the 750 that we think were originally printed. >> host: so there is out there somewhere the first folio for you. >> guest: that would be delightful. i could probably afford a page of a first folio. >> host: maybe you will do some detective work and find a copy in a bar somewhere. >> host: maybe i will. leading to the lost manuscript. there's a few placing about that

we know the robot we don't have copies of. >> host: are they still being discovered? >> guest: yes. exact copies of the first, no manuscripts have been discovered. it has not been a single manuscript in shakespeare's and that the copies of the first folio have recently gone between five and $6.5 million. many librarians flip through their inventories and say maybe i have one outfit as well. and, in fact a university -- recently discovered a copy last year discovered a copy and have it verified that is number 240 for. >> host: how exciting. i wish you luck in your quest andrea mays, a pleasure talking to you. >> guest: thank you. >> that was "after words," booktv signature program in

which authors of the latest nonfiction books are any good by journalists, public policymakers and others familiar with the richard lugar "after words" airs at the weekend on booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" online. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page it. >> booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. >> i am actually rereading -- michelle alexander, after important book for all elected officials to read. it really sets out the ramifications and the impact of the quote war on drugs as relates primarily to african-american men and families and how laws not that have been passed subsequent to that have really created a new jim

crow system because of the barriers of the systemic racial bias in our policies and in our laws. it's a major book, a book that everyone should read and i am rereading at a textbook this summer. >> booktv wants to know what you're reading. tweet us at the booktv or posted on a facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. ..