Harvard Classics

The 51 volumes for the Harvard Classics collection were selected by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot in 1909. The set is often referred to as the “five foot shelf of books,” a tribute to Eliot’s widely-publicized claim that anyone could gain a liberal education by reading a set of books that take up no more than five feet. The Harvard Classics include a variety of full works from the Western tradition including essays, poems, novels, scientific papers, and more.

Great Books of the Western World

Forty-three years after the Harvard Classics were introduced, a new collection was born under the guidance of University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins. The Great Books of the Western World originally offered 54 volumes of chronologically-organized classics.

The majority of volumes in the Great Books set include writings from just one author. The works selected are similar in genre to those in the Harvard Classics. Additionally, the Great Books set includes an introductory volume, “The Great Conversation,” and two in-depth indexes tracing ideas between all of the works in the collection.

In 1990, the collection was updated with some edits and the inclusion of six additional books featuring modern writers. The new set is still published by Encyclopedia Britannica; the older collection is regularly sold at a discount on eBay.

Shakespeare

folger.edu/folger-shakespeare Folger Shakespeare Library Editions

simonandschusterpublishing.com/folger Simon and Shuster Folger Shakespeare Library Editions

simonandschuster.com/books/ Much Ado About Nothing - Folger Shakespeare Library

        Simon & Schuster |  304 pages | ISBN 9780743484947 | August 2005

simonandschuster.com/books/ A Midsummer Night's Dream

        Simon & Schuster |  256 pages | ISBN 9780743477543 | January 2004

simonandschuster.com/books/ Twelfth Night

        Simon & Schuster |  272 pages | ISBN 9780743484961 | August 2005

Integrated Humanities Program. Univ. of Kansas

eighthdayinstitute.org IHP Brochure Content

        Semester I                    
        Homer, Odyssey and Illiad     
        Plato, Republic               
        Aesop, Fables                 
        Herodotus, Persian Wars       
        Thucydides, Peloponnesian War  
        Aeschylus, Oresteia            
        
        Semester II
        Virgil, Aeneid
        Caesar, Conquest of Gaul
        Plutarch, Makers of Rome
        Lucretius, The Nature of the Universe
        Cicero, On Duty
        Old Testament, Selections
        
        Semester III
        New Testament
        Augustine, Confessions
        Two Lives of Charlemagne
        Song of Roland
        Memoirs of the Crusades
        Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
        Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy
        St. Francis, Little Flowers
        Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
        
        Semester IV
        Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part I
        St. Cellini, Autobiography
        Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I
        Shakespeare, Hamlet
        Descartes, Meditations
        Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
        Scott, Ivanhoe
        Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution
        Newman and Huxley, Selections on Education
        Parkman, The Oregon Trail
        Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

Great Books Collections