Originally curated by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot as a complete liberal education in fifty volumes, the Harvard Classics gathers philosophy, science, literature, and history into a single indispensable library. Plato's dialogues and Marcus Aurelius's meditations sit alongside Dante's Divine Comedy, Francis Bacon's essays, Charles Darwin's scientific writing, and Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, tracing the foundations of Western thought from ancient Greece to the modern age. Homer...

Hallblithe's betrothed is carried off by sea-raiders, and he follows her to the Glittering Plain — a land where nobody dies, nobody ages, and nobody is permitted to leave. Morris designed the wallpapers still in production today and printed this at his own Kelmscott Press in 1891, the first book he made there; the immortality on offer is the thing the hero has to refuse.

The narrator dreams himself into Kent in 1381, the night before the Peasants' Revolt, and hears John Ball preach at the cross — then sits with him in the church afterwards and tells him what the next five hundred years will do to everything he is about to die for. Morris designed the wallpapers still in production today and was a socialist; this is the argument of his life, put as a conversation between two men who cannot help each other.

Golden Walter, fleeing a bad marriage, sails away and comes to a land beyond the world's edge, where a Lady, a Maid and a Dwarf live in a house in a wood — and the Maid tells him at once that the Lady will destroy him. Morris designed the wallpapers still in production today, printed this at his own Kelmscott Press in 1894, and with it began modern fantasy: Tolkien and Lewis both read it early.

A socialist falls asleep after a meeting in Hammersmith and wakes in a Thames valley with no money, no prisons, no factories and no London — only workshops, gardens and people who find work a pleasure. Morris wrote it in answer to Bellamy's regimented utopia, which he detested; his wallpapers are still in production, and his politics are still an argument.

Ralph of Upmeads, youngest son of a small king, rides out for the Well at the World's End, whose water grants long life and a kind of grace — and the road there passes through war, slavery and a woman who has drunk from it already. Morris invented the modern fantasy quest here: Tolkien and Lewis both read it closely, and the wandering, the maps and the invented country all begin in this book.

Santa's Christmas Library gathers more than four hundred seasonal narratives, poems, carols, legends, and illustrated selections into a capacious archive of Christmas writing. Moving from folktale and devotional verse to domestic realism, fantasy, satire, and moral fable, the volume traces the holiday's literary transformations across languages and centuries. Canonical Christmas narratives stand beside fairy tales, hymns, children's literature, and lesser-known period pieces, while such la...

The third month of our Gregorian calendar. Spring begins to delicately change the land. Colour and light begin their inexorable march to bathe the landscape around us. Temperatures subtly begin to rise, nature welcomes warmth.50 poems from the pens of our remarkable poets including Yeats, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Housman, Lowell and a plethora of others come lines and verse on the wonder of the landscape, its fauna and wildlife that amplify our moods, feelings, thoughts and desires ...

Child Christopher, a king's son raised in ignorance of it, and Goldilind, a queen kept prisoner in her own castle by the man who governs for her — they meet in a wood, as outlaws. Morris took the plot from the medieval romance of Havelok the Dane and rewrote it in his late deliberate English; his wallpapers are still in production, and this romance, printed at his own Kelmscott Press, was made to be beautiful as an object first.

The tragic grandeur of the Nibelungenlied is brought to life in this sweeping epic poem, which the author considered his finest literary achievement. It retells the saga of Sigurd the Volsung, from the forging of the sword Gram to the slaying of Fafnir and the doom brought by Brynhild's love. The verse rolls with a heavy, oceanic rhythm, capturing the fatalism and fierce honor of the Norse worldview. It is a monumental contribution to English poetry that revitalizes the myths of the North ...

The men of Burgdale unite with the Silver-dalers to repel a Hunnish invasion in this detailed chronicle of a fictional Germanic society. The novel paints a rich picture of daily life, clothing, and architecture, grounding its tale of war in the tangible reality of a culture worth defending. It explores the conflict between a free, settled people and a nomadic, slave-holding aggressor, prefiguring the themes of later high fantasy. It is a celebration of the "good life" found in connection t...

Experience the grandeur of the Volsung saga retold in rolling, epic verse that captures the tragic majesty of Norse mythology. The poem follows the life of the dragon-slayer Sigurd, his possession of the cursed ring, and the doom that befalls his house through betrayal and love. Considered by the author to be his masterpiece, it renders the raw power of the Eddas into a rhythmic English that thrums with ancient energy. It is a monumental work of heroic literature that delves into the accep...