Download or read book Lectures on the Classics from the Five Foot Shelf written by Charles W. Eliot and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published between 1909 and 1917 under the name "Harvard Classics," this stupendous 51-volume set-a collection of the greatest writings from literature, philosophy, history, and mythology-was assembled by American academic CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT (1834-1926), Harvard University's longest-serving president. Also known as "Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf," it represented Eliot's belief that a basic liberal education could be gleaned by reading from an anthology of works that could fit on five feet of bookshelf. Volume LI, the final volume, features 60 fascinating lectures on the wide range of knowledge the series covers-history, poetry, natural science, philosophy, biography, prose fiction, criticism and the essay, education, political science, drama, voyages and travel, and religion-that put this extraordinary survey of human knowledge in context. They are the collective capstone on a bookshelf reading course unparalleled in comprehensiveness and authority.