Royce, William Hobart, 1878-

William Hobart Royce (1878-1963) was a book collector and bibliographer of Brooklyn, N.Y.

William Hobart Royce (1878-1963) was an American author, bibliographer, book collector, and founder of the Balzac Society of America.

Born on March 20, 1878, in Springfield, Massachusetts, Royce completed his formal education by graduating from the Springfield High School in 1897. Later he would write that his "only university has been the New York Public Library."

After some bookstore experience in Springfield, Royce entered the booktrade in New York City, spending twelve years with the book department of the American News Company and seven years with the Lexington Book Shop. In 1917 he joined the Gabriel Wells rare book firm, for which he was manager for over 30 years. Wells and Royce shared a deep interest in Balzac (it was Wells who saved Balzac's house at Passy from destruction), and during this time the firm became the center of the sale of Balzaciana. Royce himself assembled a major collection of Balzac material, which was later donated to Syracuse University's Special Collections Research Center.

Royce's published works ran to over a dozen titles. His books on Balzac include Balzac, Immortal (1926), A Balzac Bibliography (1929), Indexes to A Balzac Bibliography (1930), and Balzac as He Should Be Read (1946). Royce published over a half dozen volumes of his own verse; he wrote verse also under the pen name Willie Penmore.

In 1940 Royce founded The Balzac Society of America. For over two decades he served as its president and edited its Bulletin . In recognition of his contributions to Balzac bibliography and collecting, Royce was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1935 and was made an honorary citizen of Issoudun, the French provincial town which is the setting of La Rabouilleuse .

Royce was married in 1908 to Eda Maria Wallin. They had two daughters, Eva Allen Qoyce and Abbie Anna Royce, M.D. He died on January 28, 1963.

Royce was the subject of a "Profile" article in The New Yorker, Apr 1, 1933, pp. 18-21. For further biographical and anecdotal material, see Life, Feb 24, 1947, pp. 19-20, 22; and "Brooklyn Balzac" by Stefan Zweig in Who, vol. 1, no. 3 (June 1941), p. 48.