Anybody here familiar with Elbert Hubbard?

brianlux

This is what I know so far
-He was a writer, philosopher akin to and a fan of the likes of Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman, Leo Tolstoy among others.
-He founded the Roycroft Artisan community based on the Arts and Crafts movement.
-He opted to say on board the RMS Lusitania after it was torpedoed on May 7, 1915 by a German U-boat (submarine) captained by Walther Schwieger and died with his wife on that ship.  (Erik Larson talks about Hubbard a bit in his book, Dead Wake, The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.)

Anybody here familiar with his work/ have thoughts on his legacy and work?

brianlux

In these troublesome, difficult times, we could learn a lot from Elbert Hubbard.  His wife, Alice, wrote the introduction to The Notebook of Elbert Hubbard (a book well worth seeking out).   I can't find the entire text of that introduction but some of it is written here: 

http://newschoolofliving.blogspot.com/2016/01/elbert-hubbard-master-craftsman.html

"In an introduction to his life (The Notebook of Elbert Hubbard) we find a list these qualities, penned by his wife Alice, that she thought defined his life:

·      He is an idealist, dreamer, orator, scientist; a businessman and a philosopher.

·      He is like Jefferson in his democracy, in teaching a nation to love to govern itself and to simplify living.

·      He knows that freedom to think and act, without withholding the right from any other, evolves humanity. 

·      He is like Lincoln in that he would free all mankind … there can be no free man on the earth so long as there is one slave.

·      His work is to emancipate American men and women from being slaves to useless customs, outgrown mental habits, outgrown religion, outgrown laws, outgrown superstition.

·      He sees, too, that just so long as there is one woman (and this is before woman could vote) who is denied any right that man claims for himself, there is no free man.

·      He is like Emerson in seizing upon truth, embalmed and laid in pyramids of disuse.

·      Economic freedom is the first necessity in human happiness.  He knows too, that food, shelter, clothing, fuel, are not enough to fill man’s needs.  Man has a soul to be fed and evolved as well.  Love, beauty, music art, are necessities, too."