[HUBBARD, Elbert]
The Book of Job
As Translated from the Original by Rabbi Abraham Elzas; with some Comments
on the Poem by Elbert Hubbard
East Aurora: The Roycroft Shop, 1897
Octavo (the pages 195 x 125 mm, overall 202 x 133 mm). No. 3 of 40 specially hand illumined copies, inscribed as such and signed by Elbert Hubbard on the colophon, of the whole edition of 350 copies. 15 watercolor illuminations, two pen sketches and profusion of illuminated head-pieces, initials, tail-pieces and other devices advertised as by Bertha Crawford Hubbard. Contemporary half maroon morocco over decorated paper boards, spine in six compartments, gilt spine lettering, paneling and edge rules, decorated endpapers, top edges gilt, others rough cut. Collates [3 ll.], 1 l. (illuminated title recto, copyright verso), 1 l. (colophon recto), pp. 9-142, 1 l. (illuminated printer's postscript and device recto), [4 ll.]. Printed on handmade Whatman paper. Spine rebacked preserving most of the original spine, restored loss to original top two compartments, slight restored edgewear on covers, offsetting from dentelles to free endpapers, negligible occasional offsetting of illuminations, else internally fine. Housed in a beige linen clamshell box with maroon leather label and lined with maroon felt.
This first issue in 1897 of The Roycroft Shop, thus renamed, followed the Ruskin and Turner of late 1896. Both books were first conceived with a limited edition on Japanese vellum which segued into the actual production on handmade Whatman paper with a limited number hand illumined (26 for Ruskin, 40 here). The Job shares its Antiqua Old Style font and many of its illuminated initials and panels with the Ruskin and indeed the first books of the Printing Shop, starting with Song of Songs and Journal of Koheleth of 1896. While The Philistine for February 1897 announced that 26 copies of Ruskin "specially illumined by Bertha Hubbard" were all sold at $10.00, other Roycroft illuminators had a hand in the Ruskin and the illumination of prior volumes, and quite possibly different illuminators were at work even within the same copy of Job (here, perhaps Minnie Gardner), although again Bertha Hubbard was the advertised illuminator. McKenna states (p. 84) that to his knowledge several of the first 40 numbered copies of Job were not, while two copies with higher numbers were, specially illumined.
Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft Shop was an American Arts and Crafts emulation of William Morris's Kelmscott Press. Punctuating a mid-life career change with a summer term at Harvard, brief stint in the Boston publishing trade and his 1894 walking tour of the homes of English literary greats, Hubbard embarked with printer Harry P. Taber on a mutual adventure, the former inaugurating his Little Journeys on Taber's press, the latter starting the Roycroft Printing Shop with his own magazine, The Philistine. Late in 1895 Hubbard bought out Taber, so that Song of Songs, begun in September on Taber's press in Taber's shop, was finished in January on Hubbard's press in Hubbard's shop. Hubbard, the eccentric utopian "Fra Elbertus," continued The Philistine as a philosophizing literary showcase, "discovering" Stephen Crane and bearding the established order. In the course of 1896 Hubbard enticed the services of designer William W. Denslow (responsible for the initial letters and panels), binder Louis Herman Kinder "from Leipsig" and, crucially as Taber's replacement, the printer Charles "Cy" Rosen, whose Job was a vast improvement over Taber's productions. Typically, Job contains a large measure of Hubbard; in the long introductory essay he begins: "The Book of Job in point of merit disputes first place in the Bible with Ecclesiastes. In some ways it is more valuable than Ecclesiastes, being written by a younger man, one in whom the love of life still held firm place." The translation of the Book itself was that, from 1872, of Rabbi Abraham Elzas, who had been active in the English movement to translate anew the original Hebrew books of the Bible. (His son Barnett Abraham became a noted man of Jewish history and letters in the American South.)
Literature: McKenna, Paul, A History and Bibliography of the Roycroft
Printing Shop, North Tonawanda, New York, 1986, pp. 47 (ill.) and 84.
Price: $1,900
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