Harvard Classics

Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair is a satirical novel that opens amid the bustling, self‑conscious world of Sir Pitt Crawley, a…

The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4

George Gordon Byron

The volume gathers a series of Byron’s later poems and fragments, each opening with a solemn meditation on…

Apology

Plato

Plato’s Apology presents the recorded defence of Socrates at his trial in Athens, framed as a three‑part…

Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4)

Plutarch

Plutarch’s Lives III is a collection of biographical sketches that juxtaposes Greek and Roman figures,…

The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The volume presents the complete surviving correspondence of Marcus Tullius Cicero, arranged strictly in…

Aeneidos

Virgil

Aeneidos est poema epicum Latinum a Virgilio conscriptum, quod Aeneae, Troianorum heroï, fata et itinerum per…

The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1

Henry James

The Portrait of a Lady, Volume 1 is a work of psychological fiction that opens with an extensive portrait of…

Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Robert Burns

This volume gathers the poems and songs of Scotland’s beloved bard, Robert Burns, presenting the full range…

Andersen's Fairy Tales

H. C. Andersen

Andersen’s Fairy Tales gathers the Danish author’s imaginative narratives, beginning with the whimsical…

The Aeneid of Virgil

Virgil

Virgil’s Aeneid is an epic poem that recounts the wanderings of the Trojan hero Aeneas as he strives to found…

Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans

Plutarch

Plutarch’s Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans is a collection of paired biographies that pits the great…

Utopia

More, Thomas, Saint

Thomas More’s Utopia is a sixteenth‑century political satire that begins with a detailed portrait of the…

Faust: Der Tragödie erster Teil

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dieses Werk ist Goethes dramatischer Erstteil zu „Faust“, ein Gedicht‑ und Theaterspiel, das zugleich als…

The Arabian Nights: Their Best-known Tales

The Arabian Nights: Their Best‑known Tales is a curated selection from the legendary “Thousand and One…

La Divina Commedia di Dante

Dante Alighieri

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume

David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding begins with a sweeping comparison of two kinds of…

Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences

René Descartes

René Descartes’s Discourse on the Method is a philosophical memoir in which the author sets out, from the…

The Song Celestial; Or, Bhagavad-Gîtâ (from the Mahâbhârata) Being a discourse between Arjuna, Prince of India, and the Supreme Being under the form of Krishna

The Song Celestial, or Bhagavad‑Gîtâ, is a Sanskrit poem embedded in the sixth “Bhishma” Parva of the…

The Duchess of Malfi

John Webster

John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is a 17th‑century English tragedy that opens amid the tangled intrigues…

Letters of Pliny

the Younger Pliny

The work is a collection of Latin letters by Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, better known as Pliny the…

New Atlantis

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis” is a fragmentary utopian narrative first published posthumously in 1627 by his…

Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4)

Plutarch

Plutarch’s Lives is a collection of short biographical sketches that juxtapose the most celebrated Greeks and…

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition

Charles Darwin

The work is a scholarly treatise on biological evolution, presenting Charles Darwin’s sixth edition of The…

The Devil's Pool

George Sand

The Devil’s Pool presents itself as a reflective pastoral work that opens with a richly imagined meditation…