The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction

The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction complements the Harvard Classics to complete a well rounded education. Here are the books in the collection of 20 Volumes. The collection was first published in 1917 and is thus in the public domain in the USA. An introduction to the collection can be found at: Bartleby.com.

Justification

The following quote comes from Volume 1 and was written by Charles Eliot.

"In the original selection of The Harvard Classics, fiction was admitted only to a small extent, and none was admitted that was later than 1835. Indeed, Manzoni’s “I Promessi Sposi,” a historical novel published in 1826, was the only book included that would now be called a novel. “Don Quixote” (Part I) and “Pilgrim’s Progress,” two other pieces of prose fiction which found place in the collection, both belonging to the seventeenth century, have a character quite distinct from that of the nineteenth-century novel, romance, or story. Selected stories from the “Thousand and One Nights” constituted one volume of The Harvard Classics, representing there ancient Oriental fiction made known to Europe two centuries ago, and since engrafted on European literature; but these stories differ widely from the fiction of the nineteenth century in style, matter, and motive. Another kind of fiction, the fable and wonder story, was illustrated in The Harvard Classics by one volume containing fables which pass under the name of Æsop, the tales collected by the brothers Grimm, and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen; but again this form of fiction is distinct from that which the new set of twenty volumes is in tended to illustrate. Yet, after all, there are five volumes of fiction in The Harvard Classics; and that fact necessarily affected the present choice.

"This collection contains modern novels, romances, and short stories, the oldest of which appeared in 1749, but most belong to the nineteenth century. The twenty volumes represent seven different national literatures, namely: English, American, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Scandinavian. More than half the set, eleven volumes, is devoted to English and American fiction, French having two volumes, German two, Russian four, and Spanish and Scandinavian sharing one volume."

While Doctor Charles W. Eliot picked the 20 volumes an associate Doctor William Allan Neilson actually assembled the content, wrote the commentary, and obtained the critical reviews. The Shelf of Fiction volumes were published in 1917.

Online reading

These are available for reading online at: http://www.bartleby.com/hc/.

They can be download at archive.org, however they are not proofed. You can also read these online using the images which don't need to be proofed. This is likely the best way to read them as the pages are reproduced exactly from the printed page.

The list

The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction

Vol	Title	Author	ePub	MOBI
1 & 2	The History of Tom Jones	Henry Fielding	ePub	Mobi
3	A Sentimental Journey	Laurence Sterne	ePub	Mobi
3	Pride and Prejudice	Jane Austen	ePub	Mobi
4	Guy Mannering	Sir Walter Scott	ePub	Mobi
5 & 6	Vanity Fair	William Makepeace Thackeray
7 & 8	David Copperfield	Charles Dickens
9	The Mill on the Floss	George Eliot
10	The Scarlet Letter	Nathaniel Hawthorne
10	Rappaccini’s Daughter	Nathaniel Hawthorne
10	Rip Van Winkle	Washington Irving
10	The Legend of Sleepy Hollow	Washington Irving
10	Three Short Stories	Edgar Allan Poe
10	Three Short Stories	Francis Bret Harte
10	Jim Smily and His Jumping Frog	Samuel L. Clemens
10	The Man without a Country	Edward Everett Hale
11	The Portrait of a Lady	Henry James
12	Notre Dame de Paris	Victor Marie Hugo
13	Old Goriot	Honoré de Balzac
13	The Devil’s Pool	George Sand
13	The Story of a White Blackbird	Alfred de Musset
13	Five Short Stories	Alphonse Daudet
13	Two Short Stories	Guy de Maupassant
14	Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship	J. W. von Goethe
15	The Sorrows of Werther	J. W. von Goethe
15	The Banner of the Upright Seven	Gottfried Keller
15	The Rider on the White Horse	Theodor Storm
15	Trials and Tribulations	Theodor Fontane
16 & 17	Anna Karenin	Leo Tolstoy
17	Ivan the Fool	Leo Tolstoy
18	Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoevsky
19	A House of Gentlefolk	Ivan Turgenev
19	Fathers and Children	Ivan Turgenev
20	Pepita Jimenez	Juan Valera
20	A Happy Boy	Björnstjerne Björnson
20	Skipper Worse	Alexander L. Kielland

Harvard Classics

As mentioned above this collection is designed to supplement Harvard Classics by adding additional fiction books for a well rounded education. The original collection did include some fiction books as well. These include:

The Harvard Classics fiction titles

Vol	Title	Author
3	New Atlantis	Francis Bacon
14	Don Quixote (part 1)	Miguel de Cervantes
15	The Pilgrim's Progress	John Bunyan
15	The Lives of Donne and Herbert	Isaak Walton
16	Stories from the Thousand and One Nights
17	Household Tales	Grimm Brothers
17	Fables	Aesop
17	Tales	Hans Christian Anderson
18	Manfred (poetry)	Lord Byron
20	The Divine Comedy (poetry)	Dante Alighieri
21	I Promessi Sposi	Alessandro Manzoni