The Harvard Classics, 50 Volumes, Historical Ornate CLOTH Royal Bindings, 1910

The Harvard Classics

50 Volumes – Complete Collection

P.F. Collier and Son, 1910 

Featuring Historical Ornate Royal Bindings

***Please Note – These are Not Leather Bindings***

This is a beautiful 50 volume collection of “The Harvard Classics” published by P.F. Collier and Son in 1910 that feature facsimiles of ten ornate bindings that were produced for royalty during the sixteenth to nineteenth century. In 1910, Dr. Charles W. Eliot, then President of Harvard University, put together an extraordinary library of "all the books needed for a real education." Known as The Harvard Classics, this honored collection encompasses more than 2,000 years of the world's greatest poetry, drama, history, philosophy, scripture, and more. These are the books that have shaped our thoughts, our language...our very lives. The full 50-volume set brings together more than 1,850 works by over 300 masters of thought and letters, and includes Dr. Eliot's Reader's Guide and a General Index containing upwards of 18,000 entries.

Each book measures approximately 8” x 5.25” and is a bound in ornate cloth covered boards. Some of the features of the books are frontispieces protected by a tissue guards, rich red textured pastedowns and endpapers, hubbed spines, and top edge page gilding. Many of the books also contain numerous illustrations and fold-out facsimiles of original documents. The following are the list of books in the collection: 

1.   Benjamin Franklin, John Wollman, William Penn
2.   Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius
3.   Bacon, Milton’s Prose, Thomas Browne
4.   Milton’s Complete Poems in English
5.   Emerson’s Essays and English Traits

6.   Robert Burns’ Poems and Songs
7.   St. Augustine – Confessions and The Imitation of Christ
8.   Nine Greek Dramas
9.   Letters and Treatises of Cicero and Pliny
10. Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations

11. Darwin – The Origin of Species
12. Plutarch’s Lives
13. Virgil’s Aeneid
14. Cervantes – Don Quixote
15. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; Walton’s Life of Donne and Herbert

16. The Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights)
17. Folk-lore and Fable of Aesop, Grimm, Andersen
18. Modern English Drama
19. Goethe’s Faust and Egmont; Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus
20. Dante – The Divine Comedy

21. Manzoni – I Promessi Sposi
22. Homer – The Odyssey
23. Dana – Two Years Before the Mast
24. Burke – On the Sublime, The French Revolution
25. John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle

26. Continental Drama
27. English Essays, Sidney to Macaulay
28. Essays, English and American
29. Darwin – Voyage of the Beagle
30. Scientific Papers of Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin and others

31. Cellini – Autobiography
32. Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, Renan – Essays
33. Voyages and Travels
34. Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes
35. Froissart, Malory, Holinshed – Chronicles and Legends

36. Machiavelli, More, Luther
37. Locke, Berkeley, Hume
38. Scientific Papers of Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur
39. Famous Prefaces
40. English Poetry Volume I

41. English Poetry Volume II
42. English Poetry Volume III
43. American Historical Documents
44. Sacred Writings Volume I
45. Sacred Writings Volume II

46. Elizabethan Drama Volume I
47. Elizabethan Drama Volume II
48. Pascal – Thoughts
49. Epic and Saga
50. Introduction, Reader’s Guide, Indexes

The condition of the exterior of the books ranges from Very Good to Near FINE with the usual issues associated with a 100 year old collection including some generalized shelf wear, soiling, and sunning to the spines. The internals are in Near FINE condition with strong bindings and clean text. There are no signs of previous ownership. Overall, this is a beautiful collection that will enhance any home library. Photographs of the collection as well as the bindings in the collection appear below. Please note that although the photographs appear digitized as thumbnails, they are viewable in the photo viewer by clicking the thumbnail.