Harvard Classics


The Harvard Universal Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909.
Eliot had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf. The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity and challenged Eliot to make good on this statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works, and the Harvard Classics was the result.
Eliot worked for one year with William A. Neilson, a professor of English; Eliot determined the works to be included and Neilson selected the specific editions and wrote introductory notes. Each volume had 400–450 pages, and the included texts are "so far as possible, entire works or complete segments of the world's written legacies." The collection was widely advertised by Collier and Son, in Collier's and elsewhere, with great success.

Vol. 1-10

Vol. 1: FRANKLIN, WOOLMAN, PENN

Vol. 11. ORIGIN OF SPECIES, DARWIN

Vol. 21. I PROMESSI SPOSI, MANZONI

Vol. 28. ESSAYS: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN

Vol. 29. VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE, DARWIN

Vol. 31. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, BENVENUTO CELLINI

Vol. 40. ENGLISH POETRY 1: CHAUCER TO GRAY

Vol. 41. ENGLISH POETRY 2: COLLINS TO FITZGERALD

Vol. 42. ENGLISH POETRY 3: TENNYSON TO WHITMAN

Vol. 43. AMERICAN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS

Confucian
Hebrew
Christian,
Christian,
Buddhist
Hindu
Mohammedan

Vol. 50. INTRODUCTION, READER'S GUIDE, INDEXES

Vol. 51

Vol. 51. LECTURES

The last volume contains sixty lectures introducing and summarizing the covered fields:
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction was selected by Charles W. Eliot, LLD, with notes and introductions by William Allan Neilson. It also features an index to Criticisms and Interpretations.
As Adam Kirsch, writing for Harvard magazine in 2001, notes, "It is surprisingly easy, even today, to find a complete set of the Harvard Classics in good condition. At least one is usually for sale on eBay, the Internet auction site, for $300 or so, a bargain at $6 a book. The supply, from attics or private libraries around the country, seems endless — a tribute to the success of the publisher, P.F. Collier, who sold some 350,000 sets within 20 years of the series' initial publication".

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