By Dennis Drabelle for the Washington Post, 5 June 2015

Toward the end of her stirring book, economics professor Andrea Mays wonders if a new addition shouldn’t be made to the Folger Shakespeare Library’s decorations: a sculpture of an oil derrick to remind us where the place came from. The benefactor who opened his checkbook again and again to acquire First Folios, and who built a library in the nation’s capital to house them, earned his dough as a manager and stockholder of Standard Oil. Henry Clay Folger Jr. (1857-1930) may not have been the richest man or biggest spender in America, but few Gilded Age plutocrats put their fortunes to more admirable use.

0000