Henry Folger had a thing for Shakespeare --- a very serious thing. Not just a random enjoyment or even a love for Shakespeare, but an obsession that would eventually lead him on the greatest adventure of his life. In THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE BARD, Andrea Mays brings us this story in stunning detail, a story that is slated to become a surefire obsession for all of the Bard’s fans as well as bibliophiles everywhere.

Here, we learn some truly fascinating details about Shakespeare. It’s remarkable that we all have enjoyed his work, given that it was almost destroyed and forgotten long ago. Following his death in 1616, his plays were barely performed, and no one thought that William Shakespeare would be a name that would live on in infamy throughout history. Eighteen of them never even had been published, and those that were were not in the language we have come to associate with the Bard’s work. In 1623, Shakespeare’s pals, John Heminges and Henry Condell, gathered copies of the plays and manuscripts, edited them and published 36 of them for the world to enjoy. This large volume was referred to as the First Folio, intended as a memorial to a friend who also happened to be a dramatic artist. If someone had told them what would become of that edition, they surely would have laughed in the teller’s face.

"THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE BARD is truly the most compelling literary detective story ever told, in which two remarkable men --- one a brilliant author and the other his obsessive collector --- are separated only by those little matters of time and space."

Today it is the most valuable book in the world. In a recent auction, one of the folios sold for over five million dollars. This miraculous and altogether romantic story starts with the making of the First Folio and continues through history until we finally meet the American industrialist Henry Folger, the rich man who would stop at nothing to possess his own copy of it.

THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE BARD is truly the most compelling literary detective story ever told, in which two remarkable men --- one a brilliant author and the other his obsessive collector --- are separated only by those little matters of time and space. In it, we discover and live viscerally in Elizabethan and Jacobean London as well as Gilded Age New York. Three centuries apart, these men were brought together to ensure that the book that saved the name of William Shakespeare “to the last syllable of recorded time” and established him as a cultural icon would never be lost track of in contemporary society. This literary masterpiece is as important a manuscript as anything ever recorded in human history.

Mays is a very matter-of-fact writer, and her journey is not cluttered with unnecessary details. She sticks to the facts, ensuring that we feel as if we are in the thick of the situation, in London or in New York, with Shakespeare’s ridiculously loyal and stalwart friends, or with Folger in a world that only the 1% could truly understand without Mays’ help. THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE BARD is written most intently for those who understand the worth of such a book (and others like it) and who swoon when they encounter a folio at the Free Library of Philadelphia as I recently had the privilege to enjoy.

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare --- and that puts readers in good stead to fully understand and truly comprehend what is at stake in both the adventures on which Mays takes them. It is a smoothly traversed time machine journey, and THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE BARD, were it made into a film, would end up a summer blockbuster.