Lot #155: Harvard Classics - Set of 50, 1909-1910

The Harvard Classics, also called Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf of Books, is a famous 50-volume anthology of major works in world literature, philosophy, history, religion, politics, science, and the arts, compiled by Harvard president Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909–1910. Eliot’s idea was that a carefully chosen shelf of books, read with discipline, could provide a broad liberal education at home. Harvard Magazine notes that he presented the set as a “portable university,” and he organized it into broad subject courses such as civilization, religion and philosophy, education, science, politics, and criticism. The set contains works by many major authors and historical figures, spanning more than 2,000 years of writing and including poetry, drama, essays, speeches, scripture, and historical documents. It has 50 volumes. It became a cultural icon because it packaged “the classics” into a single, curated home library and was sold as a practical self-education project. The collection was widely reprinted and remains well known today as both a literary canon and a snapshot of early 20th-century ideas about education. The Harvard Classics reflect Eliot’s own editorial judgment and the values of his era, so the selection is not neutral or universally representative by modern standards. That makes it interesting both as a reading program and as a historical document about what counted as “the classics” in 1909. Full volume list: - Franklin, Woolman, Penn. - Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. - Bacon, Milton’s Prose, Thomas Browne. - Complete Poems in English, Milton. - Essays and English Traits, Emerson. - Poems and Songs, Burns. - The Confessions of St. Augustine, The Imitation of Christ. - Nine Greek Dramas. - Letters and Treatises of Cicero and Pliny. - Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith. - Origin of Species, Darwin. - Plutarch’s Lives. - Aeneid, Virgil. - Don Quixote, Part 1, Cervantes. - Pilgrim’s Progress, Donne & Herbert, Bunyan, Walton. - The Thousand and One Nights. - Folk-Lore and Fable, Aesop, Grimm, Andersen. - Modern English Drama. - Faust, Egmont, etc., Goethe; Doctor Faustus, Marlowe. - The Divine Comedy, Dante. - I Promessi Sposi, Manzoni. - The Odyssey, Homer. - Two Years Before the Mast, Dana. - On the Sublime, French Revolution, etc., Burke. - Autobiography, etc., Essays and Addresses, J. S. Mill, T. Carlyle. - Continental Drama. - English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay. - Essays, English and American. - Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin. - Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Newcomb, etc. - Autobiography, Benvenuto Cellini. - Literary and Philosophical Essays. - Voyages and Travels. - French and English Philosophers: Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes. - Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshead. - Machiavelli, More, Luther. - Locke, Berkeley, Hume. - Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur. - Famous Prefaces. - English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray. - English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald. - English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman. - American Historical Documents. - Sacred Writings 1. - Sacred Writings 2. - Elizabethan Drama 1. - Elizabethan Drama 2. - Thoughts and Minor Works, Pascal. - Epic and Saga. Pickup category timeslot {A}