English Essays; From Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay

New York, N.Y.: P. F. Collier & Son, 1910. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. [4], 421, [3] pages. Frontis Illustrations. Decorative cover (one two-sided sheet on celebrated historical bindings laid in. Cover has some wear and soiling. Volume 27 of 51. With Introductions, Notes, and Illustrations. Includes an Introductory Note on Sir Philip Sidney, whose literary work was all published after his death, some of it against his express desire. Includes The Defense of Poesy, On Skakespeare, On Bacon, Of Agriculture, The Vision of Mirza, Westminster Abbey, the Spectator Club, Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation, A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding; A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet; On the Death of Esther Johnson [Stella]; The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; The Education of Women; Life of Addison, 1672-1719; Of the Standard of Taste; Fallacies of anti-Reformers; On Poesy or Art; Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen; Deaths of Little Children; On the Realities of Imagination; On the Tragedies of Shakespeare; Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow; A Defence of Poetry; and Machiavelli. Among the authors included are: Philip Sidney, Macaulay, Ben Johnson, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Abraham Cowley, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, David Hume, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt and Sydney Smith. Charles William Eliot (March 20, 1834 - August 22, 1926) was an American academic who was selected as Harvard's president in 1869. He transformed the college into the pre-eminent American university. Eliot served until 1909, the longest term as president in the university's history. 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.