The Harvard Classics and The Shelf of Fiction
I get questions about which books these are and where to find them all the time, so I’m really excited to learn Bartelby.com has them.
Harvard University President Charles Eliot selected them as books worth reading many years ago. A 2001 Harvard Magazine article has some more background:
"In fact, though the series bears the Harvard name, it was a commercial enterprise from the beginning. In February
1909, Eliot was preparing to retire from the presidency of Harvard after 40 years. Two editors from Collier,
Norman Hapgood and William Patten, had read a speech Eliot delivered to an audience of working men, in which
he declared that a five-foot shelf of books could provide “a good substitute for a liberal education in youth to
anyone who would read them with devotion, even if he could spare but fifteen minutes a day for reading.” Now they
approached Eliot with a proposition: he would pick the titles to fill up that shelf, and Collier would publish them as
a series."
Of course, Wikipedia has an entry on the Harvard Classics.
Isn’t three feet the length limit for a good bookshelf?
I hadn’t thought to measure my height in books until now.
from The Scout Report
October 26th, 2004 at 2:14 am
If you’re interested in other Great Books lists and what’s on them, see my Web page at www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html