Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books; The Harvard Classics

New York, N.Y.: P. F. Collier & Son, 1910. Presumed First printing thus. Hardcover. Good. [4], 462, [2] pages. Volume 39 (of 51). Occasion footnotes. Small tear at bottom of Table of Contents. Decorative Binding. Frontis With Introduction, Notes and Illustrations Includes Title, Prologue and Epilogues to the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy; Epilogue to Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers; Prologue to Golden Legend; Prologue to Caton; Epilogue to Aesop; Proem to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; Prologue to Malory's King Arthur; Prologue to Virgil's Eneydos; Dedication of the Institutes of the Christian Religion; Dedication of the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies; Preface to the History of the Reformation in Scotland; Prefatory Letter to Sir William Raleigh on the Faerie Queen; Preface to the History of the World; Prooemium, Epistle Dedicatory, Preface, and Plan of the Instauratio Magna, Etc.; Preface to the Novum Organum; Preface to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Plays; and Preface to the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica; Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern; Preface to Joseph Andrews; Preface to the English Dictionary; Preface to Shakespeare, Introduction to the Propylaen, Prefaces to Various Volumes of Poems, Appendix to Lyrical Ballads, Essay Supplementary to Preface, Preface to Cromwell, Preface to Leaves of Grass, and Introduction to the History of English Literature. 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.