The Lecture Series on the contents of The Harvard Classics ought to do much to open that collection of literary materials to many ambitious young men and women whose education was cut short by the necessity of contributing in early life to the family earnings, or of supporting themselves, "and who must therefore reach the standing of a cultivated man or woman through the pleasurable devotion of a few minutes a day through many years to the reading of good literature." (Introduction to The Harvard Classics.) The Series will also assist many readers to cultivate "a taste for serious reading of the highest quality outside of The Harvard Classics as well as within them." (Ibid.) It will certainly promote the accomplishment of the educational object I had in mind when I made the collection.
The Harvard Classics provided the general reader with a great storehouse of standard works in all the main departments of intellectual activity. To this storehouse the Lectures now open the door.
Through the Lectures the student is introduced to a vast range of topics, under the guidance of distinguished professors.
The Five-Foot Shelf, with its introductions, notes, guides to reading, and exhaustive indexes, may thus claim to constitute with these Lectures a reading course unparalleled in comprehensiveness and authority.