THE HARVARD CLASSICS, FIVE FOOT SHELF OF BOOKS. Complete in 51 volumes. Gilded Maroon Bindings. First Edition by [ENCYCLOPEDIA.] [Eliot, Dr. Charles W. (Editor and President of Harvard University.)] - 1909 - 1910 - 1914

New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909 - 1910 - 1914. FIRST EDITION / FIRST PRINTING. Bound in maroon cloth bindings. Gilded spines. Gilded Veritas medalion on the front cover. Complete First Edition in 51 volumes, with the Reader's Guide in volume 50. The Lectures as volume 51. In VERY GOOD to near FINE condition. Very fresh bright and clean. These try to close when opened, like new books will. Hinges are all 100% fully attached. Appears free of foxing. This is an exceptional set. Some spine fading. Ten volumes have the owner's last name 'Dyke' written on the fore edge, with M. Dyke on the front end paper of those volumes, but all other volumes have no previous signs of ownership. These display beautifully. The Harvard 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. The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time Covering every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century. In 1910, Dr. Charles W. Eliot, then President of Harvard University, put together an extraordinary library of "all the books needed for a real education". "Dr.Charles W.Eliot, the former Harvard president who edited the series, maintained that if one read just 15 minutes a day from the 51 volumes he assembled, it would constitute "a good substitute for a liberal education to anyone who would read them with devotion." This honored encyclopedia of literature encompasses more than 2,000 years of the world's greatest poetry, drama, history, philosophy, scripture, and more. The full set brings together more than 1,850 works by over 300 masters of thought and letters, and includes Dr. Eliot's Reader's Guide and a General Index containing upwards of 18,000 entries. "My purpose in selecting- The Harvard Classics was to provide the literary materials from which a careful and persistent reader might gain a fair view of the progress of man observing , recording, inventing, and imagining from the earliest historical times to the close of the nineteenth century. Within the limits of fifty volumes, containing about 22,000 pages, I was to provide the means of obtaining such a knowledge of ancient and modern literature as seems essential to the twentieth century idea of a cultivated man. The best acquisition of a cultivated man is a liberal frame of mind or way of thinking; but there must be added to that possession acquaintance with the prodigious store of recorded discoveries, experiences, and reflections which humanity in its intermittent and irregular progress from barbarism to civilization has acquired and laid up. From that store I proposed to make such a selection as any intellectually ambitious American family might use to advantage, even if their early opportunities of education had been scanty." The purpose of The Harvard Classics is, therefore, one very different from that of the many collections in which the editor's aim has been to select the hundred or the fifty best books in the world; it is nothing less than the purpose to present so ample and characteristic a record of the stream of the world's thought that the observant reader's mind shall be enriched, refined, and fertilized by it. Titles: 1. Plutarchs Lives 2. Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius 3. Bacon, Miltons Prose, Thomas Browne 4. Miltons Complete Poems in English 5. Emersons Essays and English Traits 6. Robert Burns Poems and Songs 7. St. Augustine Confessions and The Imitation of Christ 8. Nine Greek Dramas 9. Letters and Treatises of Cicero and Pliny 10. Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations 11. Darwin The Origin of Species 12. Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, William Penn 13. Virgils Aeneid 14. Cervantes Don Quixote 15. Bunyans Pilgrims Progress; Waltons Life of Donne and Herbert 16. The Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) 17. Folk-lore and Fable of Aesop, Grimm, Andersen 18. Modern English Drama 19. Goethes Faust and Egmont; Marlowes Dr. Faustus 20. Dante The Divine Comedy 21. Manzoni I Promessi Sposi 22. Homer The Odyssey 23. Dana Two Years Before the Mast 24. Burke On the Sublime, The French Revolution 25. John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle 26. Continental Drama 27. English Essays, Sidney to Macaulay 28. Essays, English and American 29. Darwin Voyage of the Beagle 30. Scientific Papers of Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin and others 31. Cellini Autobiography 32. Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, Renan Essays 33. Voyages and Travels 34. Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes 35. Froissart, Malory, Holinshed Chronicles and Legends 36. Machiavelli, More, Luther 37. Locke, Berkeley, Hume 38. Scientific Papers of Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur 39. Famous Prefaces 40. English Poetry Volume I 41. English Poetry Volume II 42. English Poetry Volume III 43. American Historical Documents 44. Sacred Writings Volume I 45. Sacred Writings Volume II 46. Elizabethan Drama Volume I 47. Elizabethan Drama Volume II 48. Pascal Thoughts 49. Epic and Saga 50. Introduction, Readers Guide, Indexes 51. Lectures This set would make an excellent gift and/or addition to any fine library. In addition to their shelf presence, antiquarian books make an excellent investment. We always pack very securely to help ensure safe handling during transit. All books are individually wrapped and are always professionally padded. We offer a full refund guarantee, per our terms described on our site, with notification of such intent requested. Please contact us with any inquiries.