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.
  • https://archive.org/details/harvardclassics50eliouoft/page/n7/mode/2up (readers guide starts on page 28 of the PDF)
  • 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
• Learnstrong.net contains an incredible amount of lectures on a lot of the volumes.

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
    • (Euthyphro, not included in The Harvard Classics)
    • The Apology
    • Crito
    • Phaedo
  • [[The Golden Sayings, Epictetus]]^?
  • [[Meditations, Aurelius]]^N