Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great [14 volumes, plus The Guide Book].

East Aurora: The Roycrofters. Near Fine. 1928. Hardcover. 15 volumes; 8vo; tan cloth, paper spine labels. Some age toning to the labels on six volumes, otherwise very crisp, with some pages unopened. Elbert Hubbard (b. 1856), founded the Roycroft Press in 1893 at East Aurora, modeled after the Arts & Crafts style of William Morris and his Kelmscott Press. Beginning in 1895 he issued monthly the famous "Little Journey" booklets, pleasant biographical essays on famous persons, in which fact was interwoven with comment and satire. Each volume is subtitled by subject, i. e., The Great Reformers, Good Men and Great, Famous Women, Great Philosophers, and include such figures as Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Osbourne; Josiah and Sarah Wedgwood; William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft; Dante and Beatrice; John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, etc. Choose a name in any volume and you will be informed by an intimate, unhurried prose style with period flourishes, and the rich vocabulary of the 19th century that is quite refreshing. Hubbard described himself as an anarchist and socialist, yet his writing easily combined liberal and conservative points of view, which one can imagine coming from such a staunch proponent of work and efficiency. Ultimately, in addition to the press books, the Roycrofters operated a fine bindery, a furniture shop featuring the Mission Style, and shops producing modeled leather and hammered copper goods. Hubbard and his second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, died aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915. .