Collections

Great Books

Harvard University's Harvard Classics. Originally known as 'Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf', this fifty-volume anthology of works selected by Charles W. Eliot, then President of Harvard University, and was originally published in 1909. Dr. Eliot, had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending fifteen minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf. The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity, and challenged him make good on this statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works. It also comprises a 20-volume set of fictional works.

Loeb Classical Library, published and distributed by Harvard University Press, "is the only series of books which, through original text and English translation, gives access to all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. Epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, travel, philosophy, and oratory; the great medical writers and mathematicians; those Church fathers who made particular use of pagan culture--in short, our entire classical heritage is represented here in convenient and well-printed pocket volumes in which an up-to-date text and accurate and literate English translation face each other page by page. The editors provide substantive introductions as well as essential critical and explanatory notes and selective bibliographies." This extensive collection, continually revised and updated with new volumes regularly added, can be found in a library, in major book stores, or used. Individual volumes old and new can be purchased through Amazon.com.

Yale Classical Studies, edited originally by Lawrence Richardson, Jr., and published by Waverly Press, Inc. in 1966, with subsequent printings by others, including the Cambridge University Press. This extensive collection, used to inform classical students at Yale, is today best found in a library or through a used book store. Or, for individual volumes old and new, one might even try Amazon.com.