Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American (Illustrated Edition)

The Harvard Classics series is an incredible collection of the most important literary works, compiled by Charles Eliot (1834 1926), then president of Harvard University. Eliot stated that a liberal arts education could be supplemented by reading 15 minutes a day from classic works stored on a five foot shelf. For this reason, the series is also known as the Five Foot Shelf. Volume 28 contains literary classics by American and British writers of the past few centuries, including the following works: Jonathan Swift by William Makepeace Thackeray, The Poetic Principle by Edgar Allan Poe, The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman, Walking by Henry David Thoreau, The Study of Poetry by Matthew Arnold, Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin, John Milton by Walter Bagehot, Abraham Lincoln and Democracy by James Russell Lowell, Truth of Intercourse and Samuel Pepys by Robert Louis Stevenson, and On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes by William Ellery Channing