The Harvard Classics

The Harvard Classics, popularly known as "Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books", is a 51-volume anthology of classic works compiled and edited by Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University, with William A. Neilson as assistant editor, and published by P. F. Collier & Son in 1909-10. Eliot had claimed that a liberal education could be had by reading fifteen minutes a day from a collection of books that would fit on a five-foot shelf; Collier challenged him to make the selection. The volumes are not arranged chronologically or by subject. Single-author volumes sit beside thematic anthologies of essays, prefaces, poetry, drama, sacred writings, voyages and historical documents. Volume 50 holds Eliot's introduction, the Reader's Guide and the indexes; volume 51 holds the Lectures on the Harvard Classics added in 1914. The separate 20-volume Shelf of Fiction (1917) is not included here. For the anthology volumes this file lists the most significant pieces and summarises the rest in a note.