The Harvard Universal Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909. This volume (41) is the second of three which consists of English Poetry. The aim is to provide a substantial representation of the most distinguished poets of England and America for the last five hundred years.
With Introduction and Notes
About the Author
Charles William Eliot (1834 – 1926) was an American academic who was selected as Harvard's president in 1869. A member of the prominent Eliot family of Boston, he transformed the provincial college into the pre-eminent American research university. Eliot served until 1909, having the longest term as president in the university's history. During his presidency Harvard raised its entrance requirements, and other major colleges did likewise. This, in turn, effected a corresponding rise in secondary-school standards. In the report of the Committee of Ten, a national commission on secondary education (1893), he urged the introduction of foreign languages and mathematics during the student’s seventh school year. The idea was embodied later (1910) by the introduction of junior high schools in the United States. Eliot served as president of the National Education Association (1903) and was the first honorary president of the Progressive Education Association (1919).
