1dlphcoracl
Little Treat #8:
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Roycroft Shop, 1902. Signed by Elbert Hubbard.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) was born in small-town Midwestern United States in the mid-19th century. As a child he and his siblings attended local public schools and he had little academic inclination during these years. That would change as he entered his adult years, resulting in his entering Harvard College in 1893 at the age of twenty-six. He became disillusioned with the nature and structure of the Harvard curriculum, leaving before graduating to pursue his literary career. Prior to entering college he held a number of odd jobs which included farm work, teaching and rudimentary newspaper reporting. He found his initial calling as a salesman for a soap company and became a highly successful advertising executive.
In his thirties he left the advertising and business world to become an author, printing and publishing his early works in his own print shop which he named the Roycroft Press in 1895. He was enormously influenced by William Morris and his Kelmscott Press, claiming to have visited Morris in Great Britain and writing about his experience as part of his "Little Journeys" series of visits and books (both real and imagined) to or about great personages. Hubbard also established two magazines as vehicles for his thoughts and philosophies, "The Philistine" and "The Fra".
Although a great admirer of William Morris (more on this later regarding his establishment of the Roycroft Colony in East Aurora, New York) he was not nearly as well educated or intellectual as Morris. His philosophies were wildly inconsistent with Hubbard describing himself as "an anarchist and a socialist" yet often espousing conservative views. He proclaimed:
" I believe in social, economic, domestic, political, mental and spiritual freedom."
"I am an Anarchist. All good men are Anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are Anarchists. Jesus was an Anarchist."
"I believe John Ruskin, William Morris, Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Leo Tolstoy tone Prophets of God, and they should rank in mental reach and spiritual insight with Elijah, Hosea, Ezekiel, and Isaiah."
Conversely, his most famous essay entitled 'A Message to Garcia' published as an incidental article in The Philistine, is an inspirational self-help/leadership article about a soldier (Lt. Andrew Rowan) who succeeds in accomplishing a mission during the Spanish-American War in 1898. He would write:
"It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing."
This article on self-determination and leadership was included in the U.S. Marine Corps Commandment's reading list from 1989 to 2015.
Following William Morris' lead and model, Hubbard would expand his printing endeavors from his monthly magazines The Philistine and The Fra to include classic literature, emulating the unwavering standards of the Kelmscott Press. The Roycroft Printing Shop continued along Morris' lines by becoming a full-fledged community of workers producing beautiful hand-crafted works in interior design including Mission furniture (still highly prized to this day), stained glass, leather goods, copper vases and utensils. The Roycrofter community became a self-fulfilling prophecy attracting young men and women who highly prized making beautiful objects with their hands in a distinctive Arts and Crafts style. The suffragist activities of Hubbard's second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, further increased the appeal of the Roycroft community in East Aurora, attracting young radicals, freethinkers, reformers, and fellow suffragists. A quotation from John Ruskin became the Roycrofter doctrine:
"A belief in working with the head, hand and heart and mixing enough play with the work so that every task is pleasurable and makes for health and happiness."
Elbert Hubbard continued to be a lightning rod for controversy with his odd mix of socialist, anarchist and conservative views, aided by his deliberately unusual appearance wearing long, dark overcoats, broad-brimmed hats, and sporting long hair in a page-boy cut. For many ordinary folk he was a long overdue antidote to the age of the extraordinarily wealthy Robber Baron industrialists, unregulated capitalism and exploitation of the common worker. For others, he was a Midwestern soap salesman and advertising executive who was little more than a huckster and self-promoting charlatan. This controversy would resolve itself in an unexpected way - in May 1915, Elbert and Alice Hubbard were passengers en route to England on the ill-fated British ocean-liner RMS Lusitania which was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat (the U-20). The Hubbards were among the 1,198 passengers and crew who perished.
Collectors notes:
The Roycroft Shop (Roycrofters) published their books in many editions varying from deluxe private press, modeled after the Kelmscott Press, to the inexpensive and mundane in an effort to make their publications available in a wide price range. For serious private press collectors, the top-of-the-line Roycrofters - of which this edition is one - have the following characteristics:
1. Printed in small limited editions of 100 copies.
2.Bindings in half-morocco (goatskin) leather with hand-marbled papers over boards, with matching marbled paper for the endpapers and free endplates. The bindings, featuring hubbed spines with elaborate gilt lettering and design, were either crafted or directly supervised by master binder Louis Kinder, who worked at the Roycroft shop from 1897 to 1911. German-born Kinder spent a seven-year apprenticeship in Leipzig, Germany and was considered to be the foremost bookbinder in the United States in the early 20th century.
3. Printed on handmade Japan vellum paper.
4. Superb letterpress printing with a clear, legible typeface.
5. Hand illumination of the title page, colophon and several initial letters.
6. Elbert Hubbard signature in the colophon.
Photographs to follow.
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Roycroft Shop, 1902. Signed by Elbert Hubbard.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) was born in small-town Midwestern United States in the mid-19th century. As a child he and his siblings attended local public schools and he had little academic inclination during these years. That would change as he entered his adult years, resulting in his entering Harvard College in 1893 at the age of twenty-six. He became disillusioned with the nature and structure of the Harvard curriculum, leaving before graduating to pursue his literary career. Prior to entering college he held a number of odd jobs which included farm work, teaching and rudimentary newspaper reporting. He found his initial calling as a salesman for a soap company and became a highly successful advertising executive.
In his thirties he left the advertising and business world to become an author, printing and publishing his early works in his own print shop which he named the Roycroft Press in 1895. He was enormously influenced by William Morris and his Kelmscott Press, claiming to have visited Morris in Great Britain and writing about his experience as part of his "Little Journeys" series of visits and books (both real and imagined) to or about great personages. Hubbard also established two magazines as vehicles for his thoughts and philosophies, "The Philistine" and "The Fra".
Although a great admirer of William Morris (more on this later regarding his establishment of the Roycroft Colony in East Aurora, New York) he was not nearly as well educated or intellectual as Morris. His philosophies were wildly inconsistent with Hubbard describing himself as "an anarchist and a socialist" yet often espousing conservative views. He proclaimed:
" I believe in social, economic, domestic, political, mental and spiritual freedom."
"I am an Anarchist. All good men are Anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are Anarchists. Jesus was an Anarchist."
"I believe John Ruskin, William Morris, Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Leo Tolstoy tone Prophets of God, and they should rank in mental reach and spiritual insight with Elijah, Hosea, Ezekiel, and Isaiah."
Conversely, his most famous essay entitled 'A Message to Garcia' published as an incidental article in The Philistine, is an inspirational self-help/leadership article about a soldier (Lt. Andrew Rowan) who succeeds in accomplishing a mission during the Spanish-American War in 1898. He would write:
"It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing."
This article on self-determination and leadership was included in the U.S. Marine Corps Commandment's reading list from 1989 to 2015.
Following William Morris' lead and model, Hubbard would expand his printing endeavors from his monthly magazines The Philistine and The Fra to include classic literature, emulating the unwavering standards of the Kelmscott Press. The Roycroft Printing Shop continued along Morris' lines by becoming a full-fledged community of workers producing beautiful hand-crafted works in interior design including Mission furniture (still highly prized to this day), stained glass, leather goods, copper vases and utensils. The Roycrofter community became a self-fulfilling prophecy attracting young men and women who highly prized making beautiful objects with their hands in a distinctive Arts and Crafts style. The suffragist activities of Hubbard's second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, further increased the appeal of the Roycroft community in East Aurora, attracting young radicals, freethinkers, reformers, and fellow suffragists. A quotation from John Ruskin became the Roycrofter doctrine:
"A belief in working with the head, hand and heart and mixing enough play with the work so that every task is pleasurable and makes for health and happiness."
Elbert Hubbard continued to be a lightning rod for controversy with his odd mix of socialist, anarchist and conservative views, aided by his deliberately unusual appearance wearing long, dark overcoats, broad-brimmed hats, and sporting long hair in a page-boy cut. For many ordinary folk he was a long overdue antidote to the age of the extraordinarily wealthy Robber Baron industrialists, unregulated capitalism and exploitation of the common worker. For others, he was a Midwestern soap salesman and advertising executive who was little more than a huckster and self-promoting charlatan. This controversy would resolve itself in an unexpected way - in May 1915, Elbert and Alice Hubbard were passengers en route to England on the ill-fated British ocean-liner RMS Lusitania which was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat (the U-20). The Hubbards were among the 1,198 passengers and crew who perished.
Collectors notes:
The Roycroft Shop (Roycrofters) published their books in many editions varying from deluxe private press, modeled after the Kelmscott Press, to the inexpensive and mundane in an effort to make their publications available in a wide price range. For serious private press collectors, the top-of-the-line Roycrofters - of which this edition is one - have the following characteristics:
1. Printed in small limited editions of 100 copies.
2.Bindings in half-morocco (goatskin) leather with hand-marbled papers over boards, with matching marbled paper for the endpapers and free endplates. The bindings, featuring hubbed spines with elaborate gilt lettering and design, were either crafted or directly supervised by master binder Louis Kinder, who worked at the Roycroft shop from 1897 to 1911. German-born Kinder spent a seven-year apprenticeship in Leipzig, Germany and was considered to be the foremost bookbinder in the United States in the early 20th century.
3. Printed on handmade Japan vellum paper.
4. Superb letterpress printing with a clear, legible typeface.
5. Hand illumination of the title page, colophon and several initial letters.
6. Elbert Hubbard signature in the colophon.
Photographs to follow.
2dlphcoracl
Little Treat in its original felt-lined clamshell box.
8dlphcoracl
Frontispiece: portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
9dlphcoracl
Title page with hand-illumination.
10dlphcoracl
Page one with hand-illuminated initial letter.
11dlphcoracl
Sample text page.
12dlphcoracl
Final page.
13dlphcoracl
Roycroft Shop logo with hand-illumination.
14dlphcoracl
Colophon signed and numbered by Elbert Hubbard.
15dlphcoracl
A bookshelf of Little Roycrofters.
16dlphcoracl
Macro photo #1.
17dlphcoracl
Macro photo #2.
18dlphcoracl
Macro photo #3.
