The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, was a fifty-volume anthology of works selected by Charles W. Eliot. It was originally published in 1909. Dr. Eliot, then President of Harvard University, had stated in 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. (Originally he had said a three-foot shelf). The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity, and challenged him make good on this statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works; the Harvard Classics was the result.
The collection was widely advertised by Collier and Son, in Collier's Magazine and elsewhere, with great success. As Adam Kirsch, writing in 2001 Harvard Magazine , notes, "It is surprisingly easy, even today, to find a complete set of the Harvard Classics in good condition. At least one is usually for sale on eBay, the Internet auction site, for $300 or so, a bargain at $6 a book. The supply, from attics or private libraries around the country, seems endless—a tribute to the success of the publisher, P.F. Collier, who sold some 350,000 sets within 20 years of the series' initial publication."
Malcolm X read the entire set when he was in prison.
The concept of education through systematic reading of seminal works themselves (rather than textbooks), was carried on by John Erskine at Columbia University, and, in the 1930s, Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago, carried this idea further with the concepts of education through study of the "great books" and "great ideas" of Western civilization. This led to the publication of Great Books of the Western World, which is still in print and actively marketed. In 1937, under Stringfellow Barr, St. John's College introduced a curriculum based on the direct study of "great books."
The Harvard Classics set is popular today with those interested in home schooling.
Epic & Saga: Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel & The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
Lectures on the Harvard Classics
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction
The Harvard classics shelf of fiction, is selected by Charles W. Eliot, LLD (1834-1926),
with notes and introductions by William Allan Neilson. It also features an index
to Criticisms and Interpretations.
The Five-Foot Shelf, with its introductions, notes, guides to reading, and exhaustive indexes, may claim to constitute a reading course unparalleled in comprehensiveness and authority.
--from Notes on the Lectures William Allan Neilson
Further reading and external links
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Journal of John Woolman, Fruits of Solitude (Harvard Classics, Part 1), Kessinger Publishing Company; (January 2004) ISBN 0766182088
Harvard Classics 51 Volumes, P. F. Collier & Son, ISBN 1199606979
