From the waning years of the nineteenth century until his death aboard the Lusitania in 1915, publisher Elbert Hubbard exerted a tremendous influence upon his contemporaries as a pundit, thinker, and lecturer. All but forgotten today except for a few epigrams rarely credited to him, Hubbard is one of those illustrious men of his times whose glory failed to extend beyond the grave. His greatest talent was his Barnum-like ability to fleece the unsophisticated American public. While he lived, his self-described "periodical of protest," the Philistine, helped him achieve the literary stature he lusted after, although few men attracted more vocal enemies.

Elbert Green Hubbard (at age thirty-seven he dropped his middle name) was born in Bloomington, Illinois, on 19 June 1856 to Silas Hubbard, an eccentric country doctor, and Juliana Frances Hubbard. A latecomer to the world of letters, the industrious Hubbard peddled soap door-to-door for a living until he...