Editing Harvard Classics (section)

== Enduring success ==
As [[Adam Kirsch]], writing for [[Harvard Magazine|''Harvard'' magazine]] in 2001, notes, "It is surprisingly easy, even today, to find a complete set of the Harvard Classics in good condition. At least one is usually for sale on eBay, the Internet auction site, for $300 or so, a bargain at $6 a book. The supply, from attics or private libraries around the country, seems endless &mdash; a tribute to the success of the publisher, P.F. Collier, who sold some 350,000 sets within 20 years of the series' initial publication".<ref name=kirsch/>

{{blockquote|The Five-Foot Shelf, with its introductions, notes, guides to reading, and exhaustive indexes, may claim to constitute a reading course unparalleled in comprehensiveness and authority.|''Notes on the Lectures'' by [[William Allan Neilson]]}}

{{Blockquote |quote=The main function of the collection should be to develop and foster in many thousands of people a taste for serious reading of the highest quality, outside of The Harvard Classics as well as within them. |author=Charles W. Eliot<ref>{{cite web |url= https://archive.org/stream/harvardclassics50eliouoft/harvardclassics50eliouoft_djvu.txt |title= Full text of The Harvard Classics Volume 50 |website=Internet Archive |access-date= 26 February 2018}}</ref>|title=|source=}}

Eliot and Neilson concluded that the 50 volumes were "so far as possible, entire works or complete segments of the world's written legacies" for English speaking readers.<ref name="findarticles">{{cite web|title=Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books: Toward a Centennial of The Harvard Classics|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3708/is_200604/ai_n17178495|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070301160210/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3708/is_200604/ai_n17178495|archive-date=2007-03-01|website=Find Articles|publisher=LookSmart}}</ref>