The Roycroft Shop, East Aurora, New York, 1908. Author's Edition. 20 large quarto volumes. Each of the 20 volumes are hand-numbered and signed, "Elbert Hubbard". Beautifully printed throughout in letterpress in reddish-brown and black on hand-made, Roycroft-watermarked paper. Title page design and initial letters designed by Dard Hunter. Decorated initials printed in black, reddish-brown and light green. Illustrated throughout with etched portraits, duo-tones, etc. 2 pages of original manuscript bound into volume I. Publisher's three-quarter crushed brown morocco, tooled in dark brown with an art nouveau design, light brown paper sides, raised bands, gilt spine lettering and decoration, top edges gilt.

The Roycrofters were an arts and crafts community founded in East Aurora, New York about 1893. Elbert Hubbard was an American writer, editor, and printer. In 1892, he went to England, met William Morris and became enamored of Morris' Arts and Crafts movement and with his Kelmscott Press. Appalled by the way commercialization cheapened the art of printing books, and inspired by William Morris' Kelmscott Press, Hubbard founded his own press in 1893. The Roycroft Press became perhaps the most important touchstone of the Arts and Crafts movement in America, which sought to revive the standards of medieval craftsmanship by producing books that were themselves works of art. This set is one of the finest examples of the Arts and Crafts style in American printing and the epitome of Hubbard's ambitions for his Roycroft Press.

Under the Roycroft imprint, Hubbard wrote 170 "conversational" essays (included in this set) which he called "Little Journeys," about the lives and works of famous personages. Included were great English authors, famous musicians, eminent artists and orators, great philosophers and scientists, great lovers and reformers, et al. Each "journey" is accompanied by a portrait of the subject, delicately etched either by Gaspard or Schneider. Hubbard quickly became both popular and famous and collected a community of craftspeople around him in Aurora. The Roycrofters included skilled metal smiths, leather smiths, printers and bookbinders, cabinet makers, etc.