Harvard Classics a.k.a. Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf

The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909. Eliot had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf.

• His Autobiography | The Harvard Classics 1: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• The Journal of John Woolman | The Harvard Classics 1: The Journal of John Woolman
• Fruits of Solitude | The Harvard Classics 1: The Fruits of Solitude by William Penn
• The Apology of Socrates | Plato
• Crito | Plato
• Phaedo | Plato
• The Golden Sayings | Epictetus
• Fragments attributed to Epictetus | Epictetus
• The Hymns of Cleanthese | Epictetus
• The Meditations | Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
• Essays, Civil and Moral, and New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon
• Areopagitica and Tractate of Education, by John Milton
• Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne
• Complete poems written in English, by John Milton
• Essays and English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Poems and songs, by Robert Burns
• The Confessions, by Saint Augustine
• The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas á Kempis
• Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Furies, and Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus
• Oedipus the King and Antigone, by Sophocles
• Hippolytus and The Bacchae, by Euripides
• The Frogs, by Aristophanes
• On Friendship, On Old Age, and letters, by Cicero
• Letters, by Pliny the Younger
• The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
• The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
• Lives, by Plutarch
• Aeneid, by Virgil
• Don Quixote, by Cervantes
• The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
• The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton
• Stories from the Thousand and One Nights
• Fables, by Aesop
• Children’s and Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
• Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
• 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 Bysshe Shelley
• A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon, by Robert Browning
• Manfred, by Lord Byron
• Faust, Egmont, and Hermann and Dorothea, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
• The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
• I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni
• The Odyssey, by Homer
• Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
• On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French Revolution, and A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
• Autobiography and On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
• Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, and Sir Walter Scott, by Thomas Carlyle
• Life is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
• Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille
• Phèdre, by Jean Racine
• Tartuffe, by Molière
• Minna von Barnhelm, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
• William Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller
• ENGLISH ESSAYS: SIDNEY TO MACAULAY
• ESSAYS: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN
• The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
• The Forces of Matter and The Chemical History of a Candle, by Michael Faraday
• On the Conservation of Force and Ice and Glaciers, by Hermann von Helmholtz
• The Wave Theory of Light and The Tides, by Lord Kelvin
• The Extent of the Universe, by Simon Newcomb
• Geographical Evolution, by Sir Archibald Geikie
• The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
• Essays, by Michel Eyquem de 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 Friedrich von Schiller
• Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
• Byron and Goethe, by Giuseppe Mazzini
• An account of Egypt from The Histories, by Herodotus
• Germany, by Tacitus
• Sir Francis Drake Revived, by Philip Nichols
• Sir Francis 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
• Discourse on Method, by René Descartes
• Letters on the English, by Voltaire
• On the Inequality among Mankind and Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau
• Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
• Chronicles, by Jean Froissart
• The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory
• A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison
• The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli
• The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper
• Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
• The Ninety-Five Theses, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, and On the Freedom of a Christian, by Martin Luther
• 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
• The Oath of Hippocrates
• Journeys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Paré
• On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey
• The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, by Edward Jenner
• The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
• On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, by Joseph Lister
• Scientific papers, by Louis Pasteur
• Scientific papers, by Charles Lyell
• PREFACES AND PROLOGUES
• ENGLISH POETRY 1: CHAUCER TO GRAY
• ENGLISH POETRY 2: COLLINS TO FITZGERALD
• ENGLISH POETRY 3: TENNYSON TO WHITMAN
• AMERICAN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
• Confucian: The sayings of Confucius
• Hebrew: Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes
• Christian I: Luke and Acts
• Christian II: Corinthians I and II and hymns
• Buddhist: Writings
• Hindu: The Bhagavad-Gita
• Mohammedan: Chapters from the Koran
• Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe
• Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
• The Shoemaker’s Holiday, by Thomas Dekker
• The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson
• Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher
• The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster
• A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger
• Thoughts, letters, and minor works, by Blaise Pascal
• Beowulf
• The Song of Roland
• The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel
• The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
• LECTURES

        The last volume contains sixty lectures introducing and summarizing the covered fields: history, poetry, natural science, philosophy, biography, prose fiction, criticism and the essay, education, political science, drama, travelogues, and religion.

Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction

The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction was 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 History of Tom Jones Vol 1 | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 1: The History of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
• The History of Tom Jones Vol 2 | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 2: The History of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
• A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 3: A Sentimental Journey, by Laurence Sterne
• Pride and Prejudice | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 3: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
• Guy Mannering, by Sir Walter Scott
• Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
• The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• “Rip Van Winkle”, by Washington Irving
• “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, by Washington Irving
• “Eleonora”, by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Purloined Letter”, by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, by Francis Bret Harte
• “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, by Francis Bret Harte
• “The Idyl of Red Gulch”, by Francis Bret Harte
• “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”, by Samuel L. Clemens
• “The Man Without a Country”, by Edward Everett Hale
• The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
• Notre Dame de Paris, by Victor Marie Hugo
• Old Goriot, by Honoré Balzac
• The Devil’s Pool, by George Sand
• The Story of a White Blackbird, by Alfred de Musset
• “The Siege of Berlin”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “The Last Class—The Story of a Little Alsatian”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “The Child Spy”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “The Game of Billiards”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “The Bad Zouave”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “Walter Schnaffs’ Adventure” , by Guy de Maupassant
• “Two Friends”, by Guy de Maupassant
• Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• The Banner of the Upright Seven, by Gottfried Keller
• The Rider on the White Horse, by Theodor Storm
• Trials and Tribulations, by Theodor Fontane
• Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
• Ivan the Fool, by Leo Tolstoy
• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A House of Gentlefolk and Fathers and Children, by Ivan Turgenev
• Pepita Jimenez, by Juan Valera
• A Happy Boy, by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
• Skipper Worse, by Alexander L. Kielland

Harvard Classics a.k.a. Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf

The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909. Eliot had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf.

• His Autobiography | The Harvard Classics 1: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• The Journal of John Woolman | The Harvard Classics 1: The Journal of John Woolman
• Fruits of Solitude | The Harvard Classics 1: The Fruits of Solitude by William Penn
• The Apology of Socrates | Plato
• Crito | Plato
• Phaedo | Plato
• The Golden Sayings | Epictetus
• Fragments attributed to Epictetus | Epictetus
• The Hymns of Cleanthese | Epictetus
• The Meditations | Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
• Essays, Civil and Moral, and New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon
• Areopagitica and Tractate of Education, by John Milton
• Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne
• Complete poems written in English, by John Milton
• Essays and English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Poems and songs, by Robert Burns
• The Confessions, by Saint Augustine
• The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas á Kempis
• Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Furies, and Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus
• Oedipus the King and Antigone, by Sophocles
• Hippolytus and The Bacchae, by Euripides
• The Frogs, by Aristophanes
• On Friendship, On Old Age, and letters, by Cicero
• Letters, by Pliny the Younger
• The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
• The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
• Lives, by Plutarch
• Aeneid, by Virgil
• Don Quixote, by Cervantes
• The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
• The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton
• Stories from the Thousand and One Nights
• Fables, by Aesop
• Children’s and Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
• Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
• 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 Bysshe Shelley
• A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon, by Robert Browning
• Manfred, by Lord Byron
• Faust, Egmont, and Hermann and Dorothea, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
• The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
• I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni
• The Odyssey, by Homer
• Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
• On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French Revolution, and A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
• Autobiography and On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
• Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, and Sir Walter Scott, by Thomas Carlyle
• Life is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
• Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille
• Phèdre, by Jean Racine
• Tartuffe, by Molière
• Minna von Barnhelm, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
• William Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller
• ENGLISH ESSAYS: SIDNEY TO MACAULAY
• ESSAYS: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN
• The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
• The Forces of Matter and The Chemical History of a Candle, by Michael Faraday
• On the Conservation of Force and Ice and Glaciers, by Hermann von Helmholtz
• The Wave Theory of Light and The Tides, by Lord Kelvin
• The Extent of the Universe, by Simon Newcomb
• Geographical Evolution, by Sir Archibald Geikie
• The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
• Essays, by Michel Eyquem de 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 Friedrich von Schiller
• Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
• Byron and Goethe, by Giuseppe Mazzini
• An account of Egypt from The Histories, by Herodotus
• Germany, by Tacitus
• Sir Francis Drake Revived, by Philip Nichols
• Sir Francis 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
• Discourse on Method, by René Descartes
• Letters on the English, by Voltaire
• On the Inequality among Mankind and Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau
• Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
• Chronicles, by Jean Froissart
• The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory
• A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison
• The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli
• The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper
• Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
• The Ninety-Five Theses, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, and On the Freedom of a Christian, by Martin Luther
• 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
• The Oath of Hippocrates
• Journeys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Paré
• On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey
• The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, by Edward Jenner
• The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
• On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, by Joseph Lister
• Scientific papers, by Louis Pasteur
• Scientific papers, by Charles Lyell
• PREFACES AND PROLOGUES
• ENGLISH POETRY 1: CHAUCER TO GRAY
• ENGLISH POETRY 2: COLLINS TO FITZGERALD
• ENGLISH POETRY 3: TENNYSON TO WHITMAN
• AMERICAN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
• Confucian: The sayings of Confucius
• Hebrew: Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes
• Christian I: Luke and Acts
• Christian II: Corinthians I and II and hymns
• Buddhist: Writings
• Hindu: The Bhagavad-Gita
• Mohammedan: Chapters from the Koran
• Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe
• Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
• The Shoemaker’s Holiday, by Thomas Dekker
• The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson
• Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher
• The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster
• A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger
• Thoughts, letters, and minor works, by Blaise Pascal
• Beowulf
• The Song of Roland
• The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel
• The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
• LECTURES

        The last volume contains sixty lectures introducing and summarizing the covered fields: history, poetry, natural science, philosophy, biography, prose fiction, criticism and the essay, education, political science, drama, travelogues, and religion.

Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction

The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction was 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 History of Tom Jones Vol 1 | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 1: The History of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
• The History of Tom Jones Vol 2 | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 2: The History of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
• A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 3: A Sentimental Journey, by Laurence Sterne
• Pride and Prejudice | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 3: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
• Guy Mannering | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 4: Guy Mannering, by Sir Walter Scott
• Vanity Fair Vol 1 | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 5: Vanity Fair, Volume 1, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Vanity Fair Vol 2 | Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction 6: Vanity Fair, Volume 2 by William Makepeace Thackeray
• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
• The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• “Rip Van Winkle”, by Washington Irving
• “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, by Washington Irving
• “Eleonora”, by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Purloined Letter”, by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, by Francis Bret Harte
• “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, by Francis Bret Harte
• “The Idyl of Red Gulch”, by Francis Bret Harte
• “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”, by Samuel L. Clemens
• “The Man Without a Country”, by Edward Everett Hale
• The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
• Notre Dame de Paris, by Victor Marie Hugo
• Old Goriot, by Honoré Balzac
• The Devil’s Pool, by George Sand
• The Story of a White Blackbird, by Alfred de Musset
• “The Siege of Berlin”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “The Last Class—The Story of a Little Alsatian”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “The Child Spy”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “The Game of Billiards”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “The Bad Zouave”, by Alphonse Daudet
• “Walter Schnaffs’ Adventure” , by Guy de Maupassant
• “Two Friends”, by Guy de Maupassant
• Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• The Banner of the Upright Seven, by Gottfried Keller
• The Rider on the White Horse, by Theodor Storm
• Trials and Tribulations, by Theodor Fontane
• Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
• Ivan the Fool, by Leo Tolstoy
• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A House of Gentlefolk and Fathers and Children, by Ivan Turgenev
• Pepita Jimenez, by Juan Valera
• A Happy Boy, by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
• Skipper Worse, by Alexander L. Kielland