The Editor's Introduction (50)

by Charles William Eliot (Editor)

The purpose in selecting The Harvard Classics was to provide the literary materials from which a careful and persistent reader might gain a fair view of the progress of man observing, recording, inventing, and imagining from the earliest historical times to the close of the nineteenth century. Contents: Editor's Introduction; Reader's Guide to the Harvard Classics: History of Civilization; Religion and Philosophy; Education; Science; Politics; Voyages and Travels; Criticism of Literature and the Fine Arts; Drama; Biography and Letters; Essays; Narrative Poetry and Prose Fiction. An Index to the First Lines of Poems, Songs and Choruses, Hymns and Psalms. General Index. Chronological Index.

Genres: Nonfiction

484 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

Charles William Eliot was an American academic who was selected as Harvard's president in 1869. He transformed the provincial college into the preeminent American research university. Eliot served the longest term as president in the university's history.

Reviews

[C Heaton Hansen]

My goal is to read all 50 of these classics during 2010/2011. The readers guide is very informative. It suggests different approaches to reading the series; by subject, time period, sequential, etc. I think I will go with sequential and not make it too complicated.

[Nullifidian]

It feels a little odd rating a book most of which I haven't read, but in my defense the majority of this book is just an index (though I'm sure it's a very good index, hence the rating). Aside from the general, topical index, there's also an index of first lines for the poems and hymns contained in several of the volumes of the series (three sequential volumes of poetry in English, one devoted to Robert Burns, one to John Milton, and then a volume that contains, in part, the lyrics of Christian hymns). In fact, I thought it was entirely an index at first and decided to skip it, but it also has introductions from Dr. Charles W. Eliot about the genesis of the Harvard Classics project, which was interesting reading, and a "Reader's Guide to the Harvard Classics" that I also read, in addition to the "Chronological Index" (i.e. timeline) of authors and works.

The "Readers Guide" has several overlapping points and several others where it misses much of the series, so it reinforced my decision to simply read in series order rather than attempt a chronological or a thematic ordering. It appears to me that there's enough variation in the series order to keep me interested throughout. However, the fact that the Stratford Festival put up a production of King Lear for a short time on Youtube while our local public radio station was broadcasting a radio play of Hamlet the same weekend in two parts (and in whole the weekend following, which is the broadcast I listened to) did make me read Volume 46 out of order. It contains Edward II by Marlowe and then the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. Being committed to reading two plays in the volume, I decided to read them all. But that's what makes this series great. It's something you're free to dip in and out of depending on your interest and you don't need to feel committed to any specific order of works.