The Harvard Classics - 5 Foot Book Shelf
“If you were to spend just 15 minutes a day reading the right books, a quantity that could fit on a five foot shelf, you could give yourself a proper liberal education.” (Harvard’s President Charles W. Eliot). The 51-volume series he assembled was first published in 1909 and called the Five Foot Shelf, also known as The Harvard Classics. It contains classic works of world literature, important speeches, and historical documents spanning the history of human civilization, essential for anyone who wishes to become a cultivated person.
Harvard Classics complete set 51-volume collection
Individual volumes:
Harvard Classics Volume 1. Franklin, Woolman, Penn
His Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin
The Journal of John Woolman, by John Woolman (1774 ed.)
Fruits of Solitude, by William Penn
Harvard Classics Volume 2. Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius
The Apology, Phaedo, and Crito, by Plato
The Golden Sayings, by Epictetus
The Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
Harvard Classics Volume 3. Bacon, Milton’s Prose, Thomas Browne
Essays, Civil and Moral, and New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon
Areopagitica and Tractate of Education, by John Milton
Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne
Harvard Classics Volume 4. Complete Poems in English, Milton
Harvard Classics Volume 5. Essays and English Traits, Emerson
Harvard Classics Volume 6. Poems and Songs, Robert Burns
Harvard Classics Volume 7. Confessions of St. Augustine; Imitation of Christ, Kempis
The Confessions, by Saint Augustine
The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas á Kempis
Harvard Classics Volume 8. Nine Greek Dramas
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
Harvard Classics Volume 9. Letters and Treatises of Cicero and Pliny
On Friendship, On Old Age, and letters, by Cicero
Letters, by Pliny the Younger
Harvard Classics Volume 10. The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
Harvard Classics Volume 11. The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
Harvard Classics Volume 12. Plutarch’s Lives
Harvard Classics Volume 13. Aeneid, Virgil
Harvard Classics Volume 14. Don Quixote, Part 1, Cervantes
Harvard Classics Volume 15. Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan; Donne and Herbert
The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton
Harvard Classics Volume 16. The Thousand and One Nights
Harvard Classics Volume 17. Folklore and Fable, Aesop, Grimm, Anderson
Fables, by Aesop
Children’s and Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
Harvard Classics Volume 18. Modern English Drama
All for Love, by John Dryden
The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley SheridanShe Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith, The Cenci, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon, by Robert Browning
Manfred, by Lord Byron
Harvard Classics Volume 19. Faust, Egmont, etc., Doctor Faustus, Goethe, Marlowe
Faust, part 1, Egmont, and Hermann and Dorothea, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
Harvard Classics Volume 20. The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
Harvard Classics Volume 21. I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni
Harvard Classics Volume 22. The Odyssey, by Homer
Harvard Classics Volume 23. Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Harvard Classics Volume 24. On The Sublime, French Revolution, etc., Burke
On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, by Edmund Burke
on the French Revolution, by Edmund Burke
A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
Harvard Classics Volume 25. Autobiography, etc., Essays and Addresses, J.S. Mill, T. Carlyle
Autobiography, by John Stuart Mill
On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
Characteristics, by Thomas Carlyle
Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, by Thomas Carlyle
Sir Walter Scott, by Thomas Carlyle
Harvard Classics Volume 26. Continental Drama
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
Harvard Classics Volume 27. English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay
Harvard Classics Volume 28. Essays: English and American
Harvard Classics Volume 29. The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
Harvard Classics Volume 30. Faraday, Hermholtz, Kelvin, Newcomb, Etc.
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
Harvard Classics Volume 31. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Harvard Classics Volume 32. Literary and Philosophical Essays
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
Harvard Classics Volume 33. Voyages and Travels
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
Harvard Classics Volume 34. French and English Philosophers, Descartes, Voltaire,
Rousseau, Hobbes
Discourse on Method, by René Descartes
Letters on the English, by Voltaire
On the Inequality among Mankind, by Jean Rousseau
Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, by Jean Rousseau
Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
Harvard Classics Volume 35. Chronicle and Romance, Froissart, Malory, Holinshead
Chronicles, by Jean Froissart
The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory
A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison
Harvard Classics Volume 36. Machiavelli, More, Luther
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
Harvard Classics Volume 37. Locke, Berkeley, Hume
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
Harvard Classics Volume 38. Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur
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
Harvard Classics Volume 39. Famous Prefaces
Harvard Classics Volume 40. English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray
Harvard Classics Volume 41. English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald
Harvard Classics Volume 42. English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman
Harvard Classics Volume 43. American Historical Documents
Harvard Classics Volume 44. Sacred Writings 1
Confucian: The sayings of Confucius
Hebrew: Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes
Christian I: Luke and Acts
Harvard Classics Volume 45. Sacred Writings 2
Christian II: Corinthians I and II and hymns
Buddhist: Writings
Hindu: The Bhagavad-Gita
Mohammedan: Chapters from the Koran
Harvard Classics Volume 46. Elizabethan Drama 1
Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe
Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
Harvard Classics Volume 47. Elizabethan Drama 2
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
Harvard Classics Volume 48. Thoughts, letters, and minor works, by Blaise Pascal
Harvard Classics Volume 49. Epic and Saga
Beowulf
The Song of Roland
The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel
The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
Harvard Classics Volume 50. Introduction, Reader’s Guide, Indexes
Harvard Classics Volume 51. Lectures
Sixty lectures on history, poetry, natural science, philosophy, biography, prose fiction, criticism and the essay, education, political science,
drama, travelogues, and religion.