Charles W Eliot (ed) - The Harvard Classics

The Harvard Classics

Selected by Charles W. Eliot

(1834-1926)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2018

Version 1

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The Complete

HARVARD CLASSICS

By Delphi Classics, 2018

Complete Harvard Classics Selected by Charles W. Eliot

First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2018.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78656 404 7

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The oldest part of the Harvard University campus, Harvard Yard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Yard in 1920

Massachusetts Hall

Originally titled Dr. Eliots Five Foot Shelf , the 51-volume anthology of classic works now known as The Harvard Universal Classics offers some of the most esteemed works of world literature. Compiled and edited by the Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, the anthology first published in 1909. Charles W. Eliot (1834-1926) was an American academic, who had been selected as Harvards president in 1869. A member of the prominent Eliot family of Boston, he transformed the provincial college into the pre-eminent American research university. He served until 1909, enjoying the longest term as president in the universitys history.

Previously Eliot had stated in his speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending fifteen minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf, leading to the original title for the collection. The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity in this bold remark and so challenged Eliot to prove his statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works. The Harvard Classics was the result.

In preparation for the daunting task of evaluation and selection, Eliot worked for a year with William A. Neilson, a professor of English. Neilson had taught at Bryn Mawr College from 1898 to 1900, before being appointed at Harvard from 1900 to 1904, Columbia from 1904 to 1906, and then Harvard again from 1906 to 1917. He was author of a number of critical works on Shakespeare, Robert Burns and the Elizabethan theatre.

Working together, Eliot determined the works to be included and Neilson selected the specific editions and wrote introductory notes. Each volume averaged 400450 pages and the included texts were so far as possible, entire works or complete segments of the worlds written legacies. Eliot introduced the grand venture with these words, The main function of the collection should be to develop and foster in many thousands of people a taste for serious reading of the highest quality, outside of The Harvard Classics as well as within them. The collection was widely advertised by Collier and Son with great success.

Eliot in 1905

William Allan Neilson (1869-1946) was a Scottish-American educator, writer and lexicographer, graduated in the University of Edinburgh in 1891 and became a Ph.D. in Harvard University in 1898.

The 1909 Grey-Green Edition of The Harvard Classics