Henry Clay Folger, president of Standard Oil (and distantly related to the Folger’s coffee family), began collecting First Folios of William Shakespeare’s plays, usually from hard-up aristocrats, and eventually acquired about a third of all surviving copies, which today form the basis of the great Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Many others, like Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon, built up great art collections, while some simply bought indiscriminately, none more so than the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who bought treasures so freely that he needed two warehouses
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