author
Robert Hardley
Known today for a single early aviation book, this elusive 19th-century writer left behind a fascinating snapshot of how people imagined flight before airplanes became real.
1 Audiobook
A Project for Flying: In Earnest at Last!
by Robert Hardley
About the author
Robert Hardley is a very obscure author, and the reliable information available online is limited. He is chiefly associated with A Project for Flying: In Earnest at Last!, a book published in 1871 and preserved in public-domain library catalogs.
Listings from Project Gutenberg and The Online Books Page both credit him with that title, but they do not provide much personal background such as birthplace, career, or dates of birth and death. Because so little has been confirmed, the safest picture is of a little-documented writer whose name survives mainly through this unusual work on the dream of human flight.
That rarity can make Hardley especially interesting to modern listeners: his surviving book comes from a time when aviation was still speculative, so it offers a glimpse into the imagination and optimism of the era.