thoughts on this set of books? Someone sold theirs to a used bookstore near me and I'm not sure if I should get any. Translations seem pretty old
>>25213899Have the decency at least to post a legible picture
>>25213917sorry, it's the harvard classics set
It's a collection of classic Western literature. A bit American-centric. Intended as a means of obtaining a liberal education for those who weren't able to attend college. Indicative of it's time. You'll be better off having read it, but it's not the end-all-be-all. You'll find lots of squawking morons railing against it for being dated, or too Western, or too male, but it's just a collection of classic literature, philosophy and science. Feel free to skim or skip some works and replace with more modern titles, particularly the scientific texts. I like it. If I had the shelf space snd an extra $1,000, I'd buy a nice set.
>>25213899I'm sure some of them are good and some of them aren't, but it all depends on price.Tell us the prices and show us more pictures, then we can advise.
>>25213899Honestly, depending on the cost and your own wealth, you should just get all of them. You won't regret it, if you can afford it.
>>25214214 it's anywhere from like $5-15 per volume. The odyssey is five bucks but the volume labeled 'dante' only has the divine comedy and it's $15
>>25214208There's also the "Great Books of the Western World", assembled as a competing collection by Encyclopedia Britannica in the early 50s. Similar goals.
>>25214248I like this set far more. It has every field instead of just fiction and poems which piques my Autism. It has the Hippocratic corpus in full for instance, I believe.
>>25214243You can often find sets on craigslist, Facebook marketplace and ebay for cheaper. Keep in mind these are all classics in the public domain that are available for free online, or at most libraries. Vol 52,.I think, is the "synopticon" with all the works listed. There's an epub on Anna's that contains the entire compilation that is well formatted. There's also a lot of bad OCR renderings.
>>25213899The translations /are/ old, but how bad that gets varies depending on the title. The typesetting is also not great a lot of the time. What's included in each book can get a bit psychotic like the Aesop/Grimm/Andersen collection you see there. That said they look handsome on a shelf and it's mostly picks that are still a cornerstone of best books of all time lists. I'd flip through them and make sure you see yourself reading them as is, then picking the best of the lot. Otherwise I'd go for nicer versions of each book.
>>25214266>synopticonBrain fart. That's Adler's index for the Great Books, Ellison's equivalent was the last volume of the Harvard Classics called ""Introduction, Reader's Guide, and Index".
>>25213899I had almost the entire set when I was in high school. Just grab the volumes that interest you or you want for reference (e.g. the three poetry volumes and American Historical Documents).
>>25214208>too Western, or too maleSo it's too good for them.
