A soap salesman who became a leader in the American Arts and Crafts movement, Elbert Hubbard in 1895 founded an artist colony, Roycroft, that encouraged a revival of high craftsmanship and fine art in printing, bookbinding, furniture design, metalwork, and leatherwork. Hubbard published his own books as well as those of other authors; many of these editions were beautifully printed and finely bound.

In 1899 he included “A Message to Garcia” as an article in his magazine The Philistine to inspire readers to practice excellence in their own lines of work. Hubbard reprinted the article as a book in many formats, from bound leather volumes to paperbacks. The US Navy, the Boy Scouts, and a railroad, among others, bought and distributed masses of copies; Hubbard claimed that the total number ran to 40 million.

In 1915, Hubbard and his wife, noted feminist and suffragist Alice Moore Hubbard, perished along with 1,196 others aboard the Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine during World War I. The sinking caused an outcry in America and increased pressure on the US to enter the war.