During his days as Harvard’s influential president, Charles W. Eliot made a frequent assertion: 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. The publisher P. F. Collier and Son loved the idea and asked Eliot to assemble the right collection of works. The result was a 51-volume series published in 1909 called Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf. Later it would simply be called The Harvard Classics.
You can still buy an old set off of eBay for $399. But, just as easily, you can head to the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg, which have centralized links to every text included in The Harvard Classics (Wealth of Nations, Origin of Species, Plutarch’s Lives, the list goes on). Please note that the previous two links won’t give you access to the actual annotated Harvard Classics texts edited by Eliot himself. But if you want just that, you can always click here and get digital scans of the true Harvard Classics. Please note that the first two volumes appear at the bottom of the page. And, in case you want to deepen your liberal education yet further, don’t forget to check out our collection Free Online Courses — 425 in total, all from top universities. Also spend some time with our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books collections.
A big h/t to @eugenephoto
The Harvard Classics are also available on Bartleby in html format, together with Eliot’s annotations.
Here is the link:
http://www.bartleby.com/hc/
I’ve half the set jammed into some shelves round the library. Excellent investment. And you can get them for a buck or two if you’re willing to scavenge about, I expect to complete the set in a few years. Finish reading it? IDK;)
I have this set of book!! It was given to me when I graduated high school. I so love them – esp. because some of them recently got wet because of a leakage. I now also love the fact that they’re available online?
Oh wow, I know what I’ll be doing this summer.
The century-old books, digitized by Internet Archive, are a pleasure to leaf through in this new incarnation. Thousands of years of thoughts of the foremost witnesses and creators of our cultures are ours to think again. Maybe with their help we can see our today as well as they could theirs.
also : The Harvard Classics eboxed Set
http://archive.org/details/Harvard-Classics
Thank You!
How can you get credit for the free online courses? I am 65 and interested in taking some later.
Please reply by email.
Download volumes 1-51 in Kindle (Mobi) format at Mobile Read: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1606076#post1606076
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And for those who want a bit of formal training in reading these books, while still retaining the “raw” feel of reading the books and not listening to academic lectures about them, there are still a small handful of colleges that offer BAs based simply upon reading and discussing these books with peer readers. St. John’s College in Annapolis and Santa Fe, Thomas Aquinas College in California both provide such an education as their only “major”. And even core programs at Chicago, Notre Dame, and Columbia (I think) still might provide and education in these “Great Books”.
I have the eBook versions–and the very edition pictured on top!
I AM PERSUING FIVE FREE ONLINE COURSES FROM THIS SITE.ELIOT COLLECTION IS A GEM TO CHERRISH FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.