The Harvard Classics, originally marketed as Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books, is a 50-volume series of classic works of world literature, important speeches, and historical documents compiled and edited by Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot. Eliot believed that a careful reading of the series and following the eleven reading plans included in Volume 50 would offer a reader, in the comfort of the home, the benefits of a liberal education, entertainment and counsel of history's greatest creative minds. The initial success of The Harvard Classics was due, in part, to the branding offered by Eliot and Harvard University. Buyers of these sets were apparently attracted to Eliot's claims. The General Index contains upwards of 76,000 subject references.
Volumes 1-10 of The Harvard Classics (Southwark edition)
Example advertisement for The Harvard Classics showing mail-in coupon, p.2, Collier's, November 19, 1910
Eliot's letter describing the selection process in a letter to the editor, p.7, Collier's, July 24, 1909
Testimony from Robert J. Collier and John F. Oltroggege, NY Supreme Court, Oct 21, 1910 (Appellate Division-First Department), in Collier V Jones, ps. 39, 45, 60
Charles William Eliot was an American academic who was president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909, the longest term of any Harvard president. A member of the prominent Eliot family of Boston, he transformed Harvard from a respected provincial college into America's preeminent research university.
Theodore Roosevelt called him "the only man in the world I envy."
Eliot c. 1904
Eliot around the time of his arrival at MIT
With Booker Washington and other dignitaries
"Blueberry Ledge" – Eliot's cottage in Northeast Harbor, designed by Peabody & Stearns