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 XLII is the third of three volumes that ambitiously survey half a milliennium of poetry in the English language. The 200 works by 40 19th-century British authors in this volume alone include:
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "The Lady of Shalott"
• William Makepeace Thackeray: "The End of the Play"
• Robert Browning: "The Lost Mistress"
• Emily Bronte: "Last Lines"
• Matthew Arnold: "To Marguerite"
• Charles Dickens: "The Ivy Green"
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti: "Silent Noon"
• Christina Georgina Rossetti: "Song"
• William Morris: "Prologue of the Earthly Paradise"
• Robert Louis Stevenson: "In the Highlands"
• Edgar Allan Poe: "The Raven"
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The Apology"
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "The Rainy Day"
• Walt Whitman: "O Captain! My Captain!"
• and many more.