William Hobart Royce
William Hobart Royce (20 March 1878 – 28 January 1963) was an American writer and bookseller who was an expert on Honoré de Balzac. Royce published poetry under his own name and under his pen name Willie Penmore.
William Hobart Royce
- Born
- 1878 · New York City.
- Died
- 1963 · New York City.
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- writer · poet · biographer
- Honours
- Legion of Honour
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wikidata · Q3568703 · wikipedia · William Hobart Royce
In this article
Early life
Early life
Born on March 20, 1878, in Springfield, Massachusetts, Royce graduated from the Springfield High School in 1897 but did not attend college. He later said that his "only university has been the New York Public Library."
Balzac
Balzac
Royce lived his life in emulation of Balzac and was the founder (1940) and president of the Balzac Society of America. In 1935, Royce was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor and was made an honorary citizen of Issoudun, where Balzac's La Rabouilleuse was set.
Career
Career
Royce worked first in a bookshop in Springfield, before moving to New York where he spent twelve years with the American News Company followed by seven years at Max Harzof's Lexington Book Shop. According to Harzof, Royce's "main virtue was that he could be implicitly trusted with bags of uncounted gold". In 1917 Royce joined the Gabriel Wells bookselling firm where he stayed for over 30 years. In Wells, Royce met someone with a fascination with Balzac as great as his own and the shop became a centre for the sale of all types of Balzaciana. It was Wells who prevented Balzac's house at Passy from destruction.
Family
Family
Royce married Eda Maria Wallin in 1908. They had two daughters, Eva Allen Qoyce and Abbie Anna Royce.
Papers
Papers
Royce's papers, including those of the Balzac Society of America, are in the library of Syracuse University.
Selected publications
• Balzac • Balzac, Immortal. 1926. • A Balzac Bibliography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929. • Indexes to A Balzac Bibliography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930. • Balzac as he should be read. 1946. • Poetry • Remember Pearl Harbor! n.d. • The Bookman's Lament. n.d. • Balzac was Right, A Sonnet Sequence. New York, A. Giraldi, 1943.
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Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article William Hobart Royce, revision 1372592963 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Randall, David A. (1969) Dukedom Large Enough. New York: Random House, p. 20.
- 2.William Hobart Royce Papers. Syracuse University. Retrieved 25 August 2014.
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Citations
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Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 21 August 2026.
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