WOMAN'S WORK. BEING AN INQUIRY AND AN ASSUMPTION

East Aurora, New York: The Roycrofters, 1908. ONE OF 600 COPIES. 213 x 162 mm. (8 3/8 x 6 1/2"). 157, [3] pp.
ATTRACTIVE ETCHED LEATHER BINDING, unsigned but likely by the Roycroft Bindery, upper cover with curving stalks of wheat and titling, raised bands, compartments also with titling, all of the lettering in the distinctive Roycroft style designed by Dard Hunter. With frontispiece portrait of Alice Hubbard by Jules Gaspard; title page, initials, and ornaments designed by Dard Hunter. Rear flyleaf with a (binding?) ticket engraved with decorative frame and the Roycroft insignia, the number "30" written within it in pencil. ◆Light offsetting from ribbon on preface opening, otherwise in virtually mint condition with only the most trivial imperfections.

This manifesto on the equality of women and men and the necessity of their working together as equals was written by the wife of Roycroft founder Elbert Hubbard, and produced by that Arts & Crafts community. Alice Moore Hubbard (1861-1915) was teaching school when she first met Hubbard, at the time a married soap salesman. They formed an intellectual friendship that blossomed into a love affair; this resulted in the birth of a daughter and, eventually, the end of Hubbard's first marriage. After Alice and Elbert wed in 1904, she quickly became a leading force in the innovative Roycroft enterprises founded and overseen by her husband. "Head, Heart, and Hand," a history of the Roycrofters, describes Alice as Elbert's "equal in all ways," and notes that she "proved to be simultaneously his intellectual mentor, a skillful business manager, and a nationally renowned advocate for women's rights." Having more of a head for business than her philosophical husband, she oversaw the running of the Roycroft Inn, Print Shop, and other businesses, while also writing books and articles, many of which focused on the rights of women. Here, she makes the argument for marriages like her own and in general for the economic independence and self-sufficiency of women. She also decries the institutions (most notably the Christian church) that strive to keep women subordinate, at a terrific cost to both sexes. She concludes, "The only crime that can be committed against a person is to deprive him in any way of intelligent activity. So if one-half of the human race limits the activity of the other half, it is sinning against it, and its punishment is in being held by the leash with which it holds the other." Alice was a staunch advocate of women's suffrage and equal rights, marching in the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, she did not live to see women get the vote; both Hubbards perished in the sinking of the Lusitania. The book's ornaments were designed by perhaps Roycroft's most notable craftsman, Dard Hunter (1883-1966), who explored the breadth of book production as few others have: he was an author, paper maker, type designer, graphic artist, and printer. The binding is almost certainly the work of the Roycroft bindery; it is likely that the ticket on the rear flyleaf indicates this..