The purpose in selecting The Harvard Classics was to provide the literary materials from which a careful and persistent reader might gain a fair view of the progress of man observing, recording, inventing, and imagining from the earliest historical times to the close of the nineteenth century. Contents: Editor’s Introduction; Reader’s Guide to the Harvard Classics: History of Civilization; Religion and Philosophy; Education; Science; Politics; Voyages and Travels; Criticism of Literature and the Fine Arts; Drama; Biography and Letters; Essays; Narrative Poetry and Prose Fiction. An Index to the First Lines of Poems, Songs and Choruses, Hymns and Psalms. General Index. Chronological Index.