Quote:Here is a brief explanation of The Harvard Classics written by it's editor, Charles W. Elliot, LL.D. "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."

There are 50 volumes to a set and some of them come with a Reading Guide and a somewhat rare "Lectures" volume. In my opinion, the set is not complete without these volumes. So far, I have found them in black, brown, blue, red, or green covers and the older copies are sometimes referred to as the "Five-Foot Shelf of Books." Introductions and notes are included in each book and the copywrite is 1909 - 1910. I have also found a version that is referred to as the "Deluxe & Registered" edition and I have only found 20 volumes in this un-numbered series.

This list is for your information only.

Volume 1, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Journal of John Woolman, Fruits of Solitude by William Penn

Volume 2, The Apology of Socrates, Phaedo and Crito by Plato translated by Benjamin Jowett; The Golden Sayings of Epictetus translated by Hastings Crossley, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius translated by George Long

Volume 3, Essays, Civil and Moral and The New Atlantis by Francis Bacon, Areopagitica and Tractate on Education by John Milton, Religio Medici by Sir Thomas Browne

Volume 4, The Complete Poems of John Milton

Volume 5, Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Includes: The American Scholar, An Address, Man the Reformer, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Friendship, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet, Character, Manners, Gifts, Nature, Politics, New England Reformers, Worship, Beauty

Volume 6, The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (Scottish)

Volume 7, The Confessions of St. Augustine translated by Edward B. Pusey, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A. Kempis translated by William Benham

Volume 8, Nine Greek Dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, translated by E. D. A. Morshead, E.H. Plumptre, Gilbert Murray and B.B. Rogers

Volume 9, Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero with his treatises on Friendships and Old Age, translated by E. S. Shuckburgh and Letters of Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, translated by William Melmoth, revised by F. C. T. Bosanquet,

Volume 10, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, edited by C. J. Bullock, PH.D., Professor of Economics, Harvard Univ.

Volume 11, Origin of Species by Darwin

Volume 12, Plutarch's Lives of Themistocles, Pericles, Aristides, Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Demosthenes and Cicero, Caesar and Antony, in the translation called "Dryden's" corrected and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough

Volume 13, Virgil's Aeneid translated by John Dryden

Volume 14, Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part 1, by Miquel de Cervantes, translated by Thomas Shelton

Volume 15, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan and The Lives of John Donne and George Herbert by Izaak Walton

Volume 16, Stories from The Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments) translated by Edward William Lane, revised by Stanley Lane-Poole

Volume 17, Folk-Lore and Fable by Aesop, Grimm, Andersen

Volume 18, Modern English Drama Includes: All For Love by John Dryden; The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan; She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith; The Cenci by Percy Blysshe Shelley; A Blot in the Scutcheon by Robert Browning; Manfred by Lord Byron

Volume 19, Faust, Part I, Egmont, Herman Dorothea by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe and Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Volume 20, The Divine Comedy of Dante Aligheri, translated by Henry F. Cary

Volume 21, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni

Volume 22, The Odyssey of Homer, translated by S.H. Butcher and A. Lang

Volume 23, Two Years Before the Mast and Twenty-Four Years After by R. H. Dana, Jr.

Volume 24, Edmund Burke on Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on The French Revolution, A Letter to a Noble Lord

Volume 25, Autobiography and Essay on Liberty by John Stuart Mill Characteristics, Inaugural Address, Essay on Scott by Thomas Carlyle

Volume 26, Continental Drama Includes: Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca translated by Edward Fitzgerald; Polyeucte by Pierre Corneille translated by Thomas Constable; Phaedra by Jean Baptiste Racine translated by Robert Bruce Boswell; Tartuffe, or The Hypocrite by Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere translated by Curtis Hidden Page; Minna von Barnhelm, or The Soldier's Fortune by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing translated by Ernest Bell; William Tell by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

Volume 27, English Essays from Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay. Includes: The Defense of Poesy by Sir Philip Sidney, On Shakespeare by Ben Johnson, On Bacon by Ben Johnson, Of Agricultureby Abraham Cowley, The Vision of Mirza by Joseph Addison, Westminster Abbey by Joseph Addison, The Spectator Club by Sir Richard Steele, Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation by Jonathan Swift, A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding by Jonathan Swift, A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet by Jonathan Swift, On the Death of Esther Johnson (Stella) by Jonathan Swift, The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters by Daniel Defoe, The Education of Women by Daniel Defoe, Life of Addison, 1672-1719 by Samuel Johnson, Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume, Fallacies of Anti-Reformers by Sydney Smith, On Poesy or Art by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen by William Hazlitt, Deaths of Little Children by Leigh Hunt, On the Realities of Imagination by Leigh Hunt, On the Tragedies of Shakespere by Charles Lamb, Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow by Thomas de Quincey, A Defence of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Machiavelli by Thomas Babington Macaulay

Volume 28, Essays, English and American. Includes: Jonathan Swift by William Makepeace Thackeray, The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman, The Study of Poetry by Matthew Arnold, Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin, John Milton by Walter Bagehot, Science and Culture by Thomas Henry Huxley, Race and Language by Edward Augustus Freeman, Truth of Intercourse and Samuel Pepys by Robert Louis Stevenson, On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes by William Ellery Channing, The Poetic Principle by Edgar Allen Poe, Walking by Henry David Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln and Democracy by James Russell Lowell

Volume 29, The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

Volume 30, Scientific Papers. Includes: The Forces of Matter and The Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday; On the Conservation of Force and Ice Glaciers by Hermann von Helmholtz translated by Edmund Atkinson; The Wave, Theory of Light and The Tides by Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin); The Extent of the Universe by Simon Newcomb; Geographical Evolution by Sir Archibald Geikie

Volume 31, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini translated by John Addington Symonds

Volume 32, Literary and Philosophical Essays/French, German, and Italian. Includes: That We Should Not Judge of Our Happiness Until After Our Death, That to Philosophise is to Learne How to Die, Of the Institution and Education of Children, Of Friendship, Of Books by Montaigne; Montaigne and What is a Classic? by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve; The Poetry of the Celtic Races by Ernest Renan; The Education of the Human Race by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man by J.C. Friedrich von Schiller; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals and Transition From Popular Moral Philosophy to the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant; Byron and Goethe by Guiseppe Mazzini

Volume 33, Voyages and Travels, Ancient and Modern. Includes: An Account of Egypt by Herodotus translated by G. C. Macaulay, Germany by Tacitus translated by Thomas Gordon, Sir Francis Drake Revived by Sir Francis Drake edited by Philip Nichols, Sir Frances Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World by Francis Pretty, Drake's Great Armada by Captain Walter Bigges, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland by Edward Haies, The Discovery of Guiana by Sir Walter Raleigh

Volume 34, French and English Philosophers. Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Hobbes

Volume 35, Chronicle and Romance. Includes: The Chronicles of Froissart translated by Lord Berners, edited by G. C. Macaulay; The Holy Grail by Sir Thomas Malory, from the Caxton Edition of the Morte D'Arthur; A Description of Elizabethan England written by William Harrison for Holinshed's Chronicles

Volume 36, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli; Utopia by Sir Thomas More; Ninety-Five Theses (Address to the German Nobility Concerning Christian Liberty) by Martin Luther

Volume 37, Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke; Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists by George Berkeley; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume

Volume 38, Scientific Papers, Physiology, Medicine, Surgery and Geology Includes such authors as Harvey, Jenner, Lister and Pasteur

Volume 39, Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books

Volume 40, English Poetry 1, From Chaucer to Grey

Volume 41, English Poetry 2, Collins to Fitzgerald

Volume 42, English Poetry 3, Tennyson to Whitman

** Note: "The aim in these three volumes of English Poetry has been to give, as far as the limits of space allowed, a substantial representation of the most distinguished poets of England and America for the last five hundred years. Among previous anthologies an especially wide recognition has been given by the best judges to Francis Turner Palgrave’s 'Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language,' first published in 1861 and it has been thought best to make that collection the nucleus of the present one. All the poems originally selected by Mr. Palgrave have, accordingly, been retained, with the exception of those by Milton and Burns, which appear in the Harvard Classics in the complete editions of the poetical works of these two authors.

The larger scale of this collection has made it possible to ignore the limitation of most anthologies to lyrical poems, and to include a considerable number of long narrative and didactic poems. Thus we have been able to give the Prologue to Chaucer’s 'Canterbury Tales,' the most vivid series of types of character to be found in any English poem; the 'Nun’s Priest’s Tale,' one of the finest specimens of the beast fable; a large group of traditional ballads, including the almost epic 'Gest of Robin Hood'; Pope’s 'Essay on Man'; Byron’s 'Prisoner of Chillon'; Coleridge’s 'Ancient Mariner' and 'Christabel'; Keat’s 'Eve of St. Agnes'; Shelley’s 'Adonais'; Tennyson’s 'Maud'; Longfellow’s 'Evangeline'; and many others rarely found in mixed collections. All these poems are given, in accordance with the general practise in this series, in their entirety.

In the case of Chaucer and other older authors, and of poems in the Scottish dialect, the meanings of obsolete and rare words have been given in the foot-notes. The poems of each author will be found together; and the general arrangement is chronogical."

Volume 43, American Historical Documents, 1000-1904

Volume 44, Sacred Writings 1, The Sayings of Confucius, The Book of Job, The Book of Psalms, Ecclesiastes, The Gospel According to Luke, The Acts of the Apostles

Volume 45, Sacred Writings 2, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Hymns of the Christian Church, Buddhist writings, translated and annotated by Henry Clarke Warren, The Bhagavad-Gita or Song Celestial (Hindu) by Sir Edwin Arnold, Chapters from the Koran (Mohammedan) translated and annotated by E. H. Palmer

Volume 46, Elizabethan Drama, part 1 of 2. Includes: Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe; The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare; The Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare; The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare; The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Volume 47, Elizabethan Drama, part 2 of 2. Includes: The Shoemaker's Holiday by Thomas Dekker, The Alchemist by Ben Jonson, Philaster by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, A New Way to Pay Old Debts by Philip Massinger

Volume 48, Thoughts translated by W. F. Trotter, Letters translated by M. L. Booth and Minor Works translated by O. W. Wight by Blaise Pascal

Volume 49, Epic and Saga. Includes: Beowulf translated by Francis B. Gummere; The Song of Roland translated by John O’Hagan; The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel translated by Whitley Stokes, D.C.L.; The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs and Songs from the Elder Edda translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

Volume 50, Introduction, Reader’s Guide, Indexes

Lectures (Hard to find rare volume) Introduction "The Lecture Series on the contents of The Harvard Classics ought to do much to open that collection of literary materials to many ambitious young men and women whose education was cut short by the necessary of contributing in early life to the family earnings, or of supporting themselves, 'and who must therefore reach the standing of an cultivated man or woman through the pleasurable devotion of a few minutes a day through many years to the reading of good literature.’ (Introduction to The Harvard Classics.) The Series will also assist many readers to cultivate 'a taste for serious reading of the highest quality outside of The Harvard Classics as well as with in them.’ (Ibid.) It will certainly promote the accomplishment of the educational object I had in mind when I made the collection." Charles W. Elliot, editor