THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE

Limited edition. Signed and numbered by Elbert Hubbard. Original ochre half suede with tan paper-covered boards and a brown calf label bearing gilt titles to the spine. Illustrated with beautiful illuminated letters at the start of each sonnet, hand coloured with gilt and various colours. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the corners ever so slightly bumped, the spine a touch faded. The contents, with a contemporary gift inscription to one of the flyleaves, are otherwise clean throughout.

Issued in a limited edition of 980 copies of which this is number 788, signed by Elbert Hubbard in black ink on the limitation page. Hubbard was the founder of the Roycroft Movement, a group of artists and craftspeople that lived in an artist's community in East Aurora, New York, and were significant in the American Arts and Crafts movement. Hubbard and the Roycrofters' creative philosophy and aesthetics were greatly influenced by that of William Morris and John Ruskin, and like them they believed in the importance of the continuation of traditional crafts and artistic and social freedom.