The book collector who was most successful in bringing together copies of the quartos and the First Folio was Henry Clay Folger, founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library. While it is estimated that there survive around the world only about 230 copies of the First Folio, Mr. Folger was able to acquire 79 copies, as well as a large number of fragments, for the library that bears his name.
He also amassed a substantial number of quartos. For example, only fourteen copies of the First Quarto of Love's Labors Lost are known to exist, and three are at the Folger Shakespeare Library. As a consequence of Henry Folger's labors, scholars visiting the Folger Library have been able to learn a great deal about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printing and, particularly, about the printing of Shakespeare's plays.
Henry Folger did not stop at the First Folio, but collected many copies of later editions of Shakespeare, beginning with the Second Folio (1632), the Third Folio (1663–64), and the Fourth Folio (1685). Each of these later folios was based on its immediate predecessor and was edited anonymously. The first editor of Shakespeare whose name we know was Nicholas Rowe, whose first edition came out in 1709. Henry Folger collected this edition and many, many more by Rowe's successors.
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Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (editors), New Folger Library Shakespeare editions. © 2005 Folger Shakespeare Library
