In An American Bible, Alice Hubbard lays before us a rich feast of reminders that our forebears were practical, hard-working freethinkers who respected freedom and responsibility above all else. This inspiring collection features motivational, thought-provoking texts from Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Robert Ingersoll, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Elbert Hubbard, who wrote, We need a bible that shall give us facts concerning business principles, acceptable and honorable principles that apply to new methods, new morals, new needs. We need a bible that shall teach us to be well, and how to keep well; that will inspire us to obey the common laws of health; that will teach us how to exercise, work, play, think; how to breathe and to eat. We need instruction in the democracy of man’s own self, the family, the town, the State, the general government.

Alice Hubbard (1861-1915), who compiled this collection, was an influential feminist and general manager of The Roycrofters collective, an artists’ community in East Aurora, New York. The collective was founded by her husband, Elbert Green Hubbard (1856-1915), who was an important force in the American Arts and Crafts Movement. It included printers, furniture makers, metalsmiths, leathersmiths, and bookbinders who followed a belief in working with the head, hand, and heart and mixing enough play with the work so that every task is pleasurable and makes for health and happiness.

The Roycroft campus is now a National Historic Landmark. The Hubbards died in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, but their legacy lives on in this and many other inspirational works.