English Essays

Author names not noted above: Ben Jonson, Abraham Cowley, Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, David Hume, Sydney Smith, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey, Percy Bysshe Shelley 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 XXVII features 24 important essays from 17 essential English writers, including: . The Defense of Poesy by Sir Philip Sidney . On Shakespeare and On Bacon by Ben Jonson . Of Agriculture by Abraham Cowley . The Vision of Mirza and Westminster Abbey by Joseph Addison . The Spectator Club by Sir Richard Steele . Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation, A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding, A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet, and On the Death of Esther Johnson (Stella) by Jonathan Swift . The Shortest-Way With the Dissenters and The Education of Women by Daniel Defoe . Life of Addison, 1672-1719 by Samuel Johnson . Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume . Fallacies of Anti-reformers by Sydney Smith . On Poesy or Art by Samuel Taylor Coleridge . Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen by William Hazlitt . Deaths of Little Children and On the Realities of Imagination by Leigh Hunt . On the Tragedies of Shakespeare by Charles Lamb . Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow by Thomas De Quincey . A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley . Machiavelli by Thomas Babington Macaulay.