Harvard Classics Complete 51 Volume Set: Vols. 1-50 plus Lectures (The Five-Foot Shelf of Books)

Fifty-one hardcover volumes -- vols. 1-50, plus the Lectures. 8vo. 7 7/8 x 5 1/4. Original flexible green cloth bindings, gilt titles and decorations, gilt debossed Veritas seal, blind stamped borders on front board. The definitive Harvard Classics collection, also known as the Five-Foot Shelf of Books, is a monument to the world's great works of literature and history, and has been eagerly collected since it was first published in 1909. "The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot that was first published in 1909. Eliot, then President of Harvard University, had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf. (Originally he had said a three-foot shelf.) The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity, and challenged him to make good on this statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works; the Harvard Classics was the result. Eliot worked for one year together with William A. Neilson, a professor of English; Eliot determined the works to be included and Neilson selected the specific editions and wrote introductory notes. Each volume had 400 to 450 pages or so; and the included texts are "so far as possible, entire works or complete segments of the world's written legacies."