The Harvard Classics

Perhaps the best known classic book anthology of the 20th century was the Harvard Classics (a.k.a Harvard Universal Classics or Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf), compiled by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot in 1909. Published by P.F. Collier and Son, the anthology aimed to provide a complete liberal education in 51 volumes.

The list below is an overview of the works included in the 51 volume anthology. Individual poems are not listed due to sheer volume; instead the poets are listed.

Compared to the Great Books of the Western World series, the Harvard Classics skew more toward poems and historical documents rather than philosophy and science. The Harvard Classics also includes more works outside of western culture for a multicultural flavor. Such works include writings from Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism.

The Harvard Classics set has evolved into several forms over its 100+ year history. Below are exterior and interior images highlighting the main features of three popular editions of the Harvard Classics.

Looking to purchase the Harvard Classics set? See what’s for sale our there here: The Harvard Classics. Happy hunting!

1. His Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin
2. The Journal of John Woolman, John Woolman
3. Fruits of Solitude, William Penn
4. The Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Plato
5. The Golden Sayings, Epictetus
6. The Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
7. Essays, Francis Bacon
8. Civil and Moral, Francis Bacon
9. New Atlantis, Francis Bacon
10. Areopagitica, John Milton
11. Tractate of Education, John Milton
12. Religio Medici, Sir Thomas Browne
13. poems of John Milton
14. Essays and English Traits, Ralph Waldo Emerson
15. poems and songs, Robert Burns
16. The Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
17. The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis
18. Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Furies; Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus
19. Oedipus the King; Antigone, Sophocles
20. Hippolytus; The Bacchae, Euripides
21. The Frogs, Aristophanes
22. On Friendship; On Old Age, and other letters, Cicero
23. letters of Pliny the Younger
24. The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
25. The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
26. Lives, Plutarch
27. Aeneid, Virgil
28. Don Quixote, Cervantes
29. The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan
30. The Lives of Donne and Herbert, Izaak Walton
31. stories from the Thousand and One Nights, translated by Edward William Lane
32. Fables, Aesop
33. Children’s and Household Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
34. Tales, Hans Christian Andersen
35. All for Love, John Dryden
36. The School for Scandal, Richard Brinsley Sheridan
37. She Stoops to Conquer, Oliver Goldsmith
38. The Cenci, Percy Bysshe Shelley
39. A Blot in the Scutcheon, Robert Browning
40. Manfred, Lord Byron
41. Faust; Egmont; Hermann and Dorothea, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
42. Dr. Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
43. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
44. I Promessi Sposi, Alessandro Manzoni
45. The Odyssey, Homer
46. Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
47. On Taste; On the Sublime and Beautiful; Reflections on the French Revolution; A Letter to a Noble Lord, Edmund Burke
48. Autobiography; On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
49. Characteristics; Inaugural Address at Edinburgh; Sir Walter Scott, by Thomas Carlyle
50. Life is a Dream, Pedro Calderon de la Barca
51. Polyeucte, Pierre Corneille
52. Phedre, Jean Racine
53. Tartuffe, Moliere
54. Minna von Barnhelm, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
55. William Tell, Friedrich von Schiller
56. English essays [anthology]: Sidney to Macaulay
57. Essays [anthology]: English and American
58. The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
59. The Forces of Matter; The Chemical History of a Candle, Michael Faraday
60. On the Conservation of Force; Ice and Glaciers, Hermann von Helmholtz
61. The Wave Theory of Light; The Tides, Lord Kelvin
62. The Extent of the Universe, Simon Newcomb
63. Geographical Evolution, Sir Archibald Geikie
64. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
65. Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
66. Montaigne; What is Classic?, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
67. The Poetry of the Celtic Races, Ernest Renan
68. The Education of the Human Race, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
69. Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, Friedrich von Schiller
70. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic or Morals, Immanuel Kant
71. Byron and Goethe, Giuseppe Mazzini
72. The Histories, Herodotus
73. Germany, Tacitus
74. Sir Francis Drake Revived, by Philip Nichols
75. Sir Francis Drake’s Famous Voyage Round the World, by Francis Petty
76. Drake’s Great Armada, Captain Walter Bigges
77. Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Voyage to Newfoundland, Edward Haies
78. The Discovery of Guiana, by Sir Walter Raleigh
79. Discourse on Method, Rene Descartes
80. Letters on the English, Voltaire
81. On the Inequality among Mankind; Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, Jean Jacques Rousseau
82. Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
83. Chronicles, Jean Froissart
84. The Holy Grail, Sir Thomas Malory
85. A Description of Elizabethan England, William Harrison
86. The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
87. The Life of Sir Thomas More, William Roper
88. Utopia, Sir Thomas More
89. The Ninety-Five Theses; To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation; On the Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther
90. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, John Locke
91. Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists, George Berkeley
92. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume
93. The Oath of Hippocrates
94. Journeys in Diverse Places, Ambroise Paré
95. On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, William Harvey
96. The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, Edward Jenner
97. The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, Oliver Wendell Holmes
98. On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, Joseph Lister
99. Scientific papers, Louis Pasteur
100. Scientific papers, Charles Lyell
101. “Title, Prologue and Epilogues to the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy”, by William Caxton
102. “Epilogue to Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers”, William Caxton
103. “Prologue to Golden Legend”, William Caxton
104. “Prologue to Caton”, William Caxton
105. “Epilogue to Aesop”, William Caxton
106. “Proem to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales”, William Caxton
107. “Prologue to Malory’s King Arthur”
108. “Prologue to Virgil’s Eneydos”, William Caxton
109. “Dedication of the Institutes of the Christian Religion”, John Calvin
110. “Dedication of the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies”, Nicolaus Copernicus
111. “Preface to the History of the Reformation in Scotland”, John Knox
112. “Prefatory Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh on The Faerie Queene”, Edmund Spenser
113. “Preface to the History of the World”, Sir Walter Raleigh
114. “Prooemium, Epistle Dedicatory, Preface, and Plan of the Instauratio Magna, etc.”, Francis Bacon
115. “Preface to the Novum Organum”, Francis Bacon
116. “Preface to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays”, Heminge and Condell
117. “Preface to the Philosophiae Naturalis Pricipia Mathematica”, Sir Isaac Newton
118. “Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern”, John Dryden
119. “Preface to Joseph Andrews”, Henry Fielding
120. “Preface to the English Dictionary”, Samuel Johnson
121. “Preface to Shakespeare”, Samuel Johnson
122. “Introduction to the Propylaen”, J.W. von Goethe
123. “Prefaces to Various Volumes of Poems”, William Wordsworth
124. “Appendix to Lyrical Ballads”, William Wordsworth
125. “Essay Supplementary to Preface”, William Wordsworth
126. “Preface to Cromwell”, Victor Hugo
127. “Preface to Leaves of Grass”, Walt Whitman
128. “Introduction to the History of English Literature”, H.A. Taine
129. Selected Poetry of
     • Geoffrey Chaucer
     • Sir Thomas Wyatt
     • Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
     • George Gascoigne
     • Nicholas Breton
     • Anthony Munday
     • Richard Edwardes
     • Sir Walter Rayleigh
     • Sir Edward Dyer
     • John Lyly
     • Sir Philip Sydney
     • Thomas Lodge
     • George Peele
     • Robert Southwell
     • Samuel Daniel
     • Michael Drayton
     • Henry Constable
     • Edmund Spenser
     • William Habington
     • Christopher Marlowe
     • Richard Rowlands
     • Thomas Nashe
     • William Shakespeare
     • Robert Greene
     • Richard Barnfield
     • Thomas Campion
     • Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
     • Sir Henry Wotton
     • Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford
     • Ben Jonson
     • John Donne
     • Joshua Sylvester
     • William Alexander, Earl of Stirling
     • Richard Corbet
     • Thomas Heywood
     • Thomas Dekker
     • Francis Beaumont
     • John Fletcher
     • John Webster
     • William Drummond
     • George Wither
     • William Browne
     • Robert Herrick
     • Francis Quarles
     • George Herbert
     • Henry Vaughan
     • Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Alban
     • James Shirley
     • Thomas Carew
     • Sir John Suckling
     • Sir William D’Avenant
     • Richard Lovelace
     • Edmund Waller
     • William Cartwright
     • James Graham, Marquis of Montrose
     • Richard Crashaw
     • Thomas Jordan
     • Abraham Cowley
     • Alexander Brome
     • Andrew Marvell
     • Earl of Rochester
     • Sir Charles Sedley
     • John Dryden
     • Matthew Prior
     • Isaac Watts
     • Lady Grisel Baillie
     • Joseph Addison
     • Allan Ramsay
     • John Gay
     • Henry Carey
     • Alexander Pope
     • Ambrose Philips
     • Colley Cibber
     • James Thomson
     • Thomas Gray
     • George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe
     • William Collins
     • George Sewell
     • Alison Rutherford Cockburn
     • Jane Elliot
     • Christopher Smart
     • John Logan
     • Henry Fielding
     • Charles Dibdin
     • Samuel Johnson
     • Oliver Goldsmith
     • Robert Graham of Gartmore
     • Adam Austin
     • William Cowper
     • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
     • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
     • Isobel Pagan
     • Lady Anne Lindsay
     • Thomas Chatterton
     • Alexander Ross
     • John Skinner
     • Michael Bruce
     • George Halket
     • William Hamilton of Bangour
     • Hector MacNeil
     • Sir William Jones
     • Susanna Blamire
     • Anne Hunter
     • John Dunlop
     • Samuel Rogers
     • William Blake
     • John Collins
     • Robert Tannahill
     • William Wordsworth
     • William Lisle Bowles
     • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
     • Robert Southey
     • Charles Lamb
     • Sir Walter Scott
     • James Hogg
     • Robert Surtees
     • Thomas Campbell
     • J. Campbell
     • Allan Cunningham
     • George Gordon, Lord Byron
     • Thomas Moore
     • Charles Wolfe
     • Percy Bysshe Shelley
     • James Henry Leigh Hunt
     • John Keats
     • Walter Savage Landor
     • Thomas Hood
     • Sir Aubrey de Vere
     • Hartley Coleridge
     • Joseph Blanco White
     • George Darley
     • Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay
     • Sir William Edmondstoune Aytoune
     • Hugh Miller
     • Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin
     • Charles Tennyson Turner
     • Sir Samuel Ferguson
     • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
     • Edward Fitzgerald
     • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
     • Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton
     • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
     • Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton
     • William Makepeace Thackray
     • Charles Kingsley
     • J. Wilson
     • Robert Browning
     • Emily Bronte
     • Robert Stephen Hawker
     • Conventry Patmore
     • William (Johnson) Cory
     • Sydney Dobell
     • William Allingham
     • George Mac Donald
     • Edward, Earl of Lytton
     • Arthur Hugh Clough
     • Matthew Arnold
     • George Meredith
     • Alexander Smith
     • Charles Dickens
     • Thomas Edward Brown
     • James Thomson
     • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
     • Christina Georgina Rossetti
     • William Morris
     • John Boyle O’Reilly
     • Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy
     • Robert Williams Buchanen
     • Algernon Charles Swinburne
     • William Ernest Henley
     • Robert Louis Stevenson
     • William Cullen Bryant
     • Edgar Allan Poe
     • Ralph Waldo Emerson
     • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
     • John Greenleaf Whittier
     • Oliver Wendell Holmes
     • James Russell Lowell
     • Sidney Lanier
     • Bret Harte
     • Walt Whitman
130. American Historical Documents
     • “The Voyages to Vinland” (c. 1000)
     • “The Letter of Columbus to Luis de Sant Angel Announcing His Discovery” (1493)
     • “Amerigo Vespucci’s Account of His First Voyage” (1497)
     • “John Cabot’s Discovery of North America” (1497)
     • “First Charter of Virginia” (1606)
     • “The Mayflower Compact” (1620)
     • “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut” (1639)
     • “The Massachusetts Body of Liberties” (1641)
     • “Arbitrary Government Described and the Government of the Massachusetts Vindicated from that Aspersion”, by John Winthrop (1644)
     • “The Instrument of Government” (1653)
     • “A Healing Question”, by Sir Henry Vane” (1656)
     • “John Eliot’s “Brief Narrative” (1670)
     • “Declaration of Rights” (1765)
     • “The Declaration of Independence” (1776)
     • “The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence” (1775)
     • “Articles of Confederation” (1777)
     • “Articles of Capitulation, Yorktown” (1781)
     • “Treaty with Great Britain” (1783)
     • “Constitution of the United States” (1787)
     • “The Federalist”, Nos. 1 and 2 (1787)
     • “Opinion of Chief Justice Marshall, in the Case of McCulloch vs. the State of Maryland” (1819)
     • “Washington’s First Inaugural Address” (1789)
     • “Treaty with the Six Nations” (1794)
     • “Washington’s Farewell Address” (1796)
     • “Treaty with France (Louisiana Purchase)” (1803)
     • “Treaty with Great Britain (End of War of 1812)” (1814)
     • “Arrangement as to the Naval Force to Be Respectively Maintained on the American Lakes” (1817)
     • “Treaty with Spain (Acquisition of Florida)” (1819)
     • “The Monroe Doctrine” (1823)
     • “Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain” (1842)
     • “Treaty with Mexico (1848)
     • “Fugitive Slave Act” (1850)
     • “Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address” (1861)
     • “Emancipation Proclamation” (1863)
     • “Haskell’s Account of the Battle of Gettysburg”
     • “Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address” (1863)
     • “Proclamation of Amnesty” (1863)
     • “Lincoln’s Letter to Mrs. Bixby” (1864)
     • “Terms of Lee’s Surrender at Appomattox” (1865)
     • “Lee’s Farewell to His Army” (1865)
     • “Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address” (1865)
     • “Proclamation Declaring the Insurrection at an End” (1866)
     • “Treaty with Russia (Alaska Purchase)” (1867)
     • “Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands” (1898)
     • “Recognition of the Independence of Cuba” (1898)
     • “Treaty with Spain (Cession of Porto Rico and the Philippines)” (1898)
     • “Convention Between the United States and the Republic of Panama” (1904)
131. The Sayings of Confucius
132. The Book of Job (Bible)
133. The Book of Psalms (Bible)
134. Ecclesiastes (Bible)
135. The Gospel According to Luke (Bible)
136. The Acts of the Apostles
137. The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians
138. The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians
139. Hymns of the Christian Church [anthology]
140. Buddhist Writings (I. The Buddha, II. The Doctrine, III. The Order)
141. The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu)
142. Mecca Suras (the Koran)
143. Medina Suras (the Koran)
144. Edward the Second, Christopher Marlow (drama)
145. Hamlet; King Lear; Macbeth; The Tempest, William Shakespeare (drama)
146. The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Thomas Dekker (drama)
147. The Alchemist, Ben Jonson (drama)
148. Philaster, Beaumont and Fletcher (drama)
149. The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster (drama)
150. A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Philip Massinger (drama)
151. Thoughts, letters, and minor works, Blaise Pascal
152. Beowulf
153. The Song of Roland
154. The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel
155. The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
156. The Elder Edda
157. [Specific to the Harvard Classics] Introduction, Reader’s Guide, Indexes
158. Lectures on various fields (History, Poetry, Natural Science, Philosophy, Biography, Prose Fiction, Criticism and the Essay, Education, Political Science, Drama, Voyages and Travel, Religion) [anthology].