Books

BIOGRAPHY

No one had ever written a biography of the founders of the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill, Henry Clay Folger and Emily Jordan Folger. And when the Library was dedicated on Shakespeare’s 368th birthday, April 23, 1932, the guest list brought together the largest cultural gathering ever held in Washington DC, according to a local press report.

Johns Hopkins University Press released Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger on the Ides of March, 2014, 450 years after the Bard’s birth. In Collecting Shakespeare, Stephen H. Grant recounts the American success story of the Folgers of Brooklyn, a reserved Victorian couple devoted to each other, in love with Shakespeare, and bitten by the collecting bug.

BIOGRAPHY

Peter Strickland might have slipped through history’s net were it not for the author’s purchase of an item on eBay. An envelope bearing a blue five-cent postage stamp of President James Garfield completed its journey from Boston via Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseilles and was delivered in 1889 to “Capt. Peter Strickland, U. S. Consul, Goree, West Africa.”

Grant’s biography of Strickland adds to our knowledge about what consuls did and how they did it. Strickland claimed he knew more about West African trade than any other American at that time. He made over 40 voyages during the Age of Sail from New England to West Africa, carrying in the holds of his schooners, brigs, and brigantines cargo of leaf tobacco from Kentucky and Tennessee, blocks of ice wrapped up in sawdust from the Kennebec River for refrigeration.

POSTCARD BOOK

247 Salvadoran picture postcards from the period 1900–1950 are reproduced in color, with extensive commentary on 100. Typical scenes include early public buildings; streets and squares in the capital; ports and markets; hotels and lakes; groups of Indians.

The book contains biographies of men responsible for the photography, production, and distribution of postcards. The author explains how one builds a collection and the methodology he used to investigate Salvadoran history to make the old postcards come alive today. Early Salvadoran Postcards is one of the first extensive studies published on the old postcards of a Latin American country. The book was conceptualized, researched, developed, designed, and printed in El Salvador. The financial sponsors were Banco Cuscatlán and the María Escalón de Núñez Foundation.

POSTCARD BOOK

Grant soon came up with the idea of identifying 100 picture postcards that would reproduce well and started looking for books on Indonesia that might include passages that described the scenes or subjects in the postcards. Soon he had purchased or borrowed 200 books and the matching could start in earnest.

The Jakarta Post of Mar. 25, 1995 reported that five musicians sounded their drums, women and men clad in traditional Riau garb from Sumatr,––red the ladies, yellow for men––entered the hall, each hand holding a plate high in the air. « There has never been such a food presentation before, commented the Minister of Tourism, Joop Ave. The evening collected nearly $200.000 for three special projects, including Former Points of View.

POSTCARD BOOK

Images de Guinée would not have seen the light of day without the participation of actors from five entities: financier from Germany; publisher representing the Vatican; reporter and printing staff from Guinea; and postcard collectors from United States (Grant) and France (Sivan, Dürr).

The first edition of Images de Guinée was released in 1991, published by the I.M.C. (Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique or) Catholic Mission Press in Conakry, Guinea. A second edition was published in 1994. A copy of the first edition was given to Pope John Paul II when he visited Guinea on Feb. 24–25, 1992. It is safe to say that Images de Guinée is now part of the Vatican Library in Rome.

Cissé declared that the book represented the first book produced in Guinea by the private sector. All previous books in independent Guinea had been published by the Patrice Lumumba National Printing Office.

“This book will fill a major gap in our understanding of how one of America’s most influential institutions came to be, and it will be welcomed by what the 1623 Folio describes as a ‘great Variety of Readers.”
— John F. Andrews, President, The Shakespeare Guild

“What began with the purchase of an envelope on eBay by a man interested in old postcards turned into six years of research culminating in an intriguing new book.”
— The Resident , Stonington, Conn.

“We express to you our gratitude for the contribution you have made to El Salvador by providing all Salvadorans with this document which will allow historical scenes from 20th century…
— Carlos Quintanilla Schmidt, Vice-President of the Republic of El Salvador