The Folger collection includes some 60,000 handwritten documents dating from the 15th to the 21st century. Many of the manuscripts were the tools of everyday life in the 16th and 17th centuries—letters, wills, inventories, recipes, and real estate transactions—while other documents illuminate the worlds of the theater and the court. The Folger’s manuscripts offer unique windows into life in Shakespeare’s time, later writers' fascination with Shakespeare, and the development of the English theater over the centuries. Some highlights of the collection are shown here, with more information about the scope of our manuscript collection below.
An overview of the manuscripts collection
Literary and Theatrical Manuscripts
One of the Folger’s prized possessions is Lady Mary Wroth’s 17th-century sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, written out in her own hand with corrections. Other literary manuscripts include commonplace books, in which men and women wrote selections from sermons, poetry, or plays that appealed to them. Among these is a large collection of literary quotations that novelist George Eliot put together while writing Middlemarch. The Folger archives also include the papers of Delia Salter Bacon, who questioned Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays, as well as those of 18th-century Shakespeare-forger William Henry Ireland.
One highlight of the Folger’s theatrical manuscripts is the earliest known copy of Shakespeare’s plays—a conflated version of the two Henry IV plays belonging to Sir Edward Dering. The business side of theater is reflected in deeds for purchases and lease of properties at Blackfriars by Shakespeare and his fellow actors, as well as records for purchases and receipts at Drury Lane Theatre in the 18th and 19th centuries. The papers of David Garrick and his circle shed new light on Garrick's larger-than-life 18th-century career as an actor, manager, adapter, and Shakespeare promoter extraordinaire.
Family Papers and Archives
Love letters, deeds, and news from family and court are all found among the large 16th- and 17th-century collections of papers from the Bagot, Bacon–Townshend, Rich, Ferrers of Tamworth, Cavendish–Talbot, and Loseley families. The Losely papers have important documents related to the Office of Revels (responsible for festivities at court) under Sir Thomas Cawarden (d.1559); letters relating to the house arrest of Mary Queen of Scots appear in the Cavendish–Talbot papers. A separate group of recipe books shows how families preserved knowledge about food, medicinal remedies, and beauty secrets.
Other large archives include the Newdigate newsletters, reporting on politics, commerce, and social affairs in 17th-century England and Europe; the Clayton–Morris collection of early financial documents; the editorial papers and correspondence of the Nichols family (who published the Gentleman's Magazine); and 200 volumes of transcripts from the papal and Venetian archives, formerly owned by the Strozzi family. A large collection of scrapbooks from the 19th-century Shakespearian John Orchard Halliwell–Phillipps contains a varied group of materials relating to Shakespeare and the theater of his time. The Folger also holds the papers of William Winter, writer and critic of the late 19th and early 20th-century stage.