Best of the Western world's nonfiction, ca. 1909

The Harvard Classics were selected and edited by Charles W. Eliot, Harvard's president from 1869 to 1909. The books were designed to fit on a five-foot shelf. The 50 volumes comprise these writers and titles:

1. Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, William Penn

2. Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius

3. Francis Bacon, John Milton's prose, Thomas Browne

4. Milton's poems

5. 'Essays' and 'English Traits,' by Ralph Waldo Emerson

6. Poems and songs by Robert Burns

7. The 'Confessions' of St. Augustine; Thomas Kempis's 'The Imitation of Christ'

8. Nine Greek dramas

9. Letters and treatises of Cicero and Pliny

10. 'The Wealth of Nations,' by Adam Smith

11. 'The Origin of Species,' by Charles Darwin

12. Plutarch's 'Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans'

13. Virgil's 'Aeneid'

14. 'Don Quixote, Part I,' by Cervantes

15. 'Pilgrim's Progress,' by John Bunyan; 'The Lives of John Donne and George Herbert,' by Izaak Walton

16. 'The Thousand and One Nights'

17. Folklore and fables by Aesop, Grimm, and Andersen

18. 'Modern' English drama, including Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith

19. Goethe: 'Faust, Part 1' 'Egmont,' etc.; 'Dr. Faustus,' by Christopher Marlowe

20. 'The Divine Comedy,' by Dante Alighieri

21. 'I Promessi Sposi,' by Alessandro Manzoni

22. 'The Odyssey,' by Homer

23. 'Two Years Before the Mast,' by Richard Henry Dana

24. 'The Sublime and the Beautiful,' 'Reflections on the French Revolution,' etc., by Edmund Burke

25. J.S. Mill and Thomas Carlyle

26. Continental drama: Molire, Caldern, etc.

27. English essays: Sir Philip Sidney to Thomas Babbington Macaulay

28. Essays, English and American

29. 'The Voyage of the Beagle,' by Darwin

30. Scientific papers: Michael Faraday, Hermann von Helmholtz, Lord Kelvin, Simon Newcomb, etc.

31. Cellini's autobiography

32. Literary and philosophical essays: Montaigne, Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve, Ernest Renan, etc.

33. Voyages and travels

34. Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes

35. Chronicle and romance: Jean Froissart, Sir Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

36. Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, Martin Luther

37. John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume

38. William Harvey, Edward Jenner, Joseph Lister, Pasteur

39. Famous prefaces

40-42. English poetry I, II, III

43. US historical documents

44-45. Sacred writings I, II

46-47. Elizabethan drama I, II

48. 'Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works,' by Pascal

49. Epic and saga: 'Beowulf,' 'The Song of Roland,' etc.

50. Editor's introduction, reader's guide, indexes

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