From the Preface
Consciously or unconsciously we are influenced by the characters we admire. A book that exerts a deep as well as a wide influence must produce changes in the reader's way of thinking, and excite him to activity; the world for him can never be quite the same that it was before. Such books have an important part in moulding the character of a people.
It is because the books represented in this volume have been doing just that for many years that they have become so prized. In the characters of Crusoe, Gulliver and Christian, to mention only three, English-speaking people recognize pictures of the independent, self-reliant men, often self-educated (at least in many important particulars), adventurous and daring by nature, dependent upon themselves and the use of their faculties for happiness, who made England great among nations, and wrote the Constitution of the United States.