The Harvard Classics

The Harvard Classics are a 50-volume series of books compiled in 1910 by Charles W. Eliot, then president of Harvard, which were claimed to give the reader a liberal education in 15 minutes of reading a day. I thought it would be fun to read some of these books, so this tracks my progress.

Resources

• Volume 50 of the set contains an editors introduction, reader’s guide, and an index. These are split into two classes: Class I and Class II.
  • Class I contains “works regarded by their authors as history, but includes letters, dramas, novels and the like, which, by virtue of their character, period, or scene, throw light upon social and intellectual conditions”.
  • Class II contains the rest.
• The classes are:
  • Class I: The History of Civilization
  • Class I: Religion and Philosophy
  • Class I: Education
  • Class I: Science
  • Class I: Politics
  • Class I: Voyages and Travels
  • Class I: Criticism of Literature and the Fine Arts
  • Class II: Drama
  • Class II: Biography and Letters
  • Class II: Essays
  • Class II: Narrative Poetry and Prose Fiction
• Editor’s Introduction, Reader’s Guide and Index (Reader’s guide starts on page 28 of the PDF)
• Learnstrong.net contains excellent free video lectures produced by Dr. Tom McGee on (as of writing) the first 39 volumes.
• Project Gutenberg contains free e-book versions of (almost) every book.
• “Harvard Classics” on Wikipedia contains a lot of information and the list of contents.

Volumes

This is a list of volumes. Each book contains resources like a good EPUB copy and videos.

• Volume 1:
  • [[The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin]]^N
  • [[The Journal of John Woolman]]^N
  • [[Some Fruits of Solitude, Penn]]^N
• Volume 2:
  • [[The Trial and Death of Socrates, Plato]]^N
  • [[The Golden Sayings, Epictetus]]^N
  • [[Meditations, Aurelius]]^N
• Volume 3:
  • [[Essays, Bacon]]^N
  • [[New Atlantis, Bacon]]^N
  • [[Areopagitica, Milton]]^N
  • [[Tractate of Education, Milton]]^N
  • [[Religio Medici, Browne]]^N
• Volume 4:
  • [[Complete Poems, Milton]]^N (written in English)
• Volume 5:
  • [[Essays, Emerson]]^?
  • [[English Traits, Emerson]]^?
• Volume 6:
  • [[Poems and Songs, Burns]]^?
• Volume 7:
  • [[The Confessions, Augustine]]^?
  • [[The Imitation of Christ, Kempis]]^?
• Volume 8:
  • [[Agamemnon, Aeschylus]]^?
  • [[The Libation Bearers, Aeschylus]]^?
  • [[The Furies, Aeschylus]]^?
  • [[Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus]]^?
  • [[Oedipus the King, Sophocles]]^?
  • [[Antigone, Sophocles]]^?
  • [[Hippolytus, Euripides]]^?
  • [[The Bacchae, Euripides]]^?
  • [[The Frogs, Aristophanes]]^?
• Volume 9:
  • [[On Friendship, Cicero]]^?
  • [[On Old Age, Cicero]]^?
  • [[Letters, Cicero]]^?
  • [[Letters, Pliny]]^?
• Volume 10:
  • [[The Wealth of Nations, Smith]]^?
• Volume 11:
  • [[The Origin of Species, Darwin]]^?
• Volume 12:
  • [[Lives, Plutarch]]^?
• Volume 13:
  • [[Aeneid, Virgil]]^?
• Volume 14:
  • [[Don Quixote, Cervantes]]^?
• Volume 15:
  • [[The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan]]^?
  • [[The Lives of Donne and Herbert, Walton]]^?
• Volume 16:
  • [[Thousand and One Nights]]^?
• Volume 17:
  • [[Fabels, Aesop]]^?
  • [[Children’s and Household Tales, Grimm]]^?
  • [[Tales, Andersen]]^?
• Volume 18:
  • [[All for Love, Dryden]]^?
  • [[The School for Scandal, Sheridan]]^?
  • [[She Stoops to Conquer, Goldsmith]]^?
  • [[The Cenci, Shelley]]^?
  • [[A Blot in the ‘Schtcheon, Browning]]^?
  • [[Manfred, Byron]]^?
• Volume 19:
  • [[Faust, Goethe]]^?
  • [[Egmont, Goethe]]^?
  • [[Hermann and Dorothea, Goethe]]^?
  • [[Dr. Faustus, Marlowe]]^?
• Volume 20:
  • [[The Divine Comedy, Dante]]^?
• Volume 21:
  • [[I Promessi Sposi, Manzoni]]^?
• Volume 22:
  • [[The Odyssey, Homer]]^?
• Volume 23:
  • [[Two Years Before the Mast, Dana]]^?
• Volume 24:
  • [[On Taste, Burke]]^?
  • [[On the Sublime and Beautiful, Burke]]^?
  • [[Reflections on the French Revolution, Burke]]^?
• Volume 25:
  • [[Autobiography, Mill]]^?
  • [[On Liberty, Mill]]^?
  • [[Characteristics, Carlyle]]^?
  • [[Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, Carlyle]]^?
  • [[Sir Walter Scott, Carlyle]]^?
• Volume 26:
  • [[Life is a Dream, Barca]]^?
  • [[Polyeucte, Corneille]]^?
  • [[Phèdre, Racine]]^?
  • [[Tartuffe, Molière]]^?
  • [[Minna von Barnhelm, Lessing]]^?
  • [[William Tell, Schiller]]^?
• Volume 27:
  • [[The Defense of Poesy, Sidney]]^?
  • [[On Shakespeare, Jonson]]^?
  • [[On Bacon, Jonson]]^?
  • [[Of Agriculture, Cowley]]^?
  • [[The Vision of Mirza, Addison]]^?
  • [[Westminster Abbey, Addison]]^?
  • [[The Spectator Club, Steele]]^?
  • [[Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation, Swift]]^?
  • [[A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding, Swift]]^?
  • [[A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet, Swift]]^?
  • [[On the Death of Esther Johnson, Swift]]^?
  • [[The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters, Defoe]]^?
  • [[The Education of Women, Defoe]]^?
  • [[Life of Addison 1672-1719, Samuel Johnson]]^?
  • [[Of the Standard of Taste, Hume]]^?
  • [[Fallacies of Anti-Reformers, Smith]]^?
  • [[On Poesy or Art, Coleridge]]^?
  • [[Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen, Hazlitt]]^?
  • [[Deaths of Little Children, Hunt]]^?
  • [[On the Realities of Imagination, Hunt]]^?
  • [[On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, Lamb]]^?
  • [[Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow, Quincey]]^?
  • [[A Defence of Poetry, Shelley]]^?
  • [[Machiavelli, Macaulay]]^?
• Volume 28:
  • [[Jonathan Swift, Thackery]]^?
  • [[The Idea of a University, Newman]]^?
  • [[The Study of Poetry, Arnold]]^?
  • [[Sesame and Lilies, Ruskin]]^?
  • [[John Milton, Bagehot]]^?
  • [[Science and Culture, Huxley]]^?
  • [[Race and Language, Freeman]]^?
  • [[Truth of Intercourse, Stevenson]]^?
  • [[Samuel Pepys, Stevenson]]^?
  • [[On the Elevation of the Labouring Classes, Channing]]^?
  • [[The Poetic Principle, Poe]]^?
  • [[Walking, Thoreau]]^?
  • [[Abraham Lincoln, Lowell]]^?
  • [[Democracy, Lowell]]^?
• Volume 29:
  • [[The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin]]^?
• Volume 30:
  • [[The Forces of Matter, Faraday]]^?
  • [[The Chemical History of a Candle, Faraday]]^?
  • [[On the Conservation of Force, Helmholtz]]^?
  • [[Ice and Glaciers, Helmholtz]]^?
  • [[The Wave Theory of Light, Kelvin]]^?
  • [[The Tides, Kelvin]]^?
  • [[The Extent of the Universe, Newcomb]]^?
  • [[Geographical Evolution, Geikie]]^?
• Volume 31:
  • [[The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini]]^?
• Volume 32:
  • [[Essays, Montaigne]]^?
  • [[Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve]]^?
  • [[What is a Classic?, Sainte-Beuve]]^?
  • [[The Poetry of the Celtic Races, Renan]]^?
  • [[The Education of the Human Race, Lessing]]^?
  • [[Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller]]^?
  • [[Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant]]^?
  • [[Byron and Goethe, Mazzini]]^?
• Volume 33:
  • [[The Histories, Herodotus]]^? (an excerpt)
  • [[Germany, Tacitus]]^?
  • [[Sir Francis Drake Revived, Nichols]]^?
  • [[Sir Francis Drake’s Famous Voyage Round the World, Pretty]]^?
  • [[Drake’s Great Armada, Bigges]]^?
  • [[Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Voyage to Newfoundland, Haies]]^?
  • [[The Discovery of Guiana, Raleigh]]^?
• Volume 34:
  • [[Discourse on Method, Descartes]]^?
  • [[Letters on the English, Voltaire]]^?
  • [[On the Inequality among Mankind, Rousseau]]^?
  • [[Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, Rousseau]]^?
  • [[Of Man, Hobbes]]^?
  • [[Being the First Part of a Leviathan, Hobbes]]^?
• Volume 35:
  • [[Chronicles, Froissart]]^?
  • [[The Holy Grail, Malory]]^?
  • [[A Description of Elizabethan England, Harrison]]^?
• Volume 36:
  • [[The Prince, Machiavelli]]^?
  • [[The Life of Sir Thomas More, Roper]]^?
  • [[Utopia, More]]^?
  • [[The Ninety-Five Theses, Luther]]^?
  • [[To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther]]^?
  • [[On the Freedom of a Christian, Luther]]^?
• Volume 37:
  • [[Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke]]^?
  • [[Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists, Berkeley]]^?
  • [[An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume]]^?
• Volume 38:
  • [[The Oath of Hippocrates]]^?
  • [[Journeys in Diverse Places, Paré]]^?
  • [[On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, Harvey]]^?
  • [[The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, Jenner]]^?
  • [[The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, Holmes]]^?
  • [[On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, Lister]]^?
  • [[Scientific Papers, Pasteur]]^?
  • [[Scientific Papers, Lyell]]^?
• Volume 39:
  • Lots of famous prefaces
• Volume 40:
  • Selected English poems
• Volume 41:
  • Selected English poems
• Volume 42:
  • Selected English poems
• Volume 43:
  • American historical documents
• Volume 44:
  • [[The Sayings of Confucius]]^?
  • The Book of Job, [[The Bible]]^?
  • Psalms, [[The Bible]]^?
  • Ecclesiastes, [[The Bible]]^?
  • Luke, [[The Bible]]^?
  • Acts, [[The Bible]]^?
• Volume 45:
  • Corinthians I, [[The Bible]]^?
  • Corinthians II, [[The Bible]]^?
  • Lots of hymns
  • Buddhist Writings
  • [[Bhagavad Gita]]^?
  • Chapters from the Koran
• Volume 46:
  • [[Edward the Second, Marlowe]]^?
  • [[Hamlet, Shakespeare]]^?
  • [[King Lear, Shakespeare]]^?
  • [[Macbeth, Shakespeare]]^?
  • [[The Tempest, Shakespeare]]^?
• Volume 47:
  • [[The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Dekker]]^?
  • [[The Alchemist, Jonson]]^?
  • [[Philaster, Fletcher]]^?
  • [[The Duchess of Malfi, Webster]]^?
  • [[A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Massinger]]^?
• Volume 48:
  • [[Thoughts and Minor Works, Pascal]]^?
• Volume 49:
  • [[Beowulf]]^?
  • [[The Song of Roland]]^?
  • [[The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel]]^?
  • [[The Story of the Volsungs]]^?
  • [[Niblungs]]^?
• Volume 50
  • Introduction, Reader’s Guide and Indexes