Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American

*Includes a Table of Contents

*Illustrated with images of authors


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

On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes by William Ellery Channing

Science and Culture by Thomas Huxley

Race and Language by Edward Augustus Freeman