He then attended Amherst College with Charles Millard Pratt, a close friend and son of Folger's mentor at Adelphi.

To fund his education, Folger competed in many oratorical essay contests, winning prizes in 1876 and again in 1879, which paid for his junior year of school.

His wife, Emily, however, would later attribute Folger's initial fascination with Shakespeare to an 1879 lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose eloquent delivery sounded Shakespearean to the college student.

In 1908, he was elected assistant treasurer of Jersey Standard, and joined its board of sixteen directors, managing the company's finances and compiling production data.

[1] Henry Clay Folger met Emily Clara Jordan in the early 1880s at a meeting of the Irving Literary Circle in Brooklyn.

At an 1882 picnic held by the Irving Literary Circle, Charles and Lillie prompted the two to each give a toast; Emily drew from Othello.

[1] The Folgers took annual vacations to The Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Virginia, where Henry enjoyed participating in golf tournaments in his later years.

[1] Folger was an avid collector of Shakespeareana, assembling the world's largest collection of First Folio editions of Shakespeare's plays.

Unlike other wealthy collectors of the period, like Henry E. Huntington and J.P. Morgan, Folger favored "imperfect" copies of rare volumes, with their marginalia and other markings.

Based on their collective knowledge of Latin and French, and Emily's proficiency in German, the couple also favored rare volumes published on the Continent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Due to the growing size of the collection and their concern for fireproofing, eventually few of the Folgers' acquisitions were stored in their living space.

The collection itself was stored among several fireproof warehouse companies throughout Manhattan, in specially-designed wooden cases originally meant to hold two five-gallon cans of oil each.

Frederick Fales, a co-worker of Folger's at Standard Oil, initially designed and ordered these air-tight wooden cases for company use.

His high placement at Standard Oil also allowed him to take out loans with his friend Charles Millard Pratt, John D. Rockefeller, and even his wife, to fund his purchases.

[1] Early in his career at Standard Oil and as a collector, Folger doubted that he would eventually have the funds to build a memorial or library for his growing collection, and in 1895 he offered to sell it to John D. Rockefeller, who refused.

Soon afterwards, Congress passed a resolution allowing use of the land on East Capitol Street where the Folger Shakespeare Library now stands.

The inclusion of an Elizabethan theater within the Library's main building was also Folger's idea, though he intended it as a venue for academic lectures rather than performances.

With additional funding from Emily Folger, the library opened in 1932 on April 23, the date traditionally believed to be Shakespeare's birthday.