The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free EBooks | Hacker News Reader

The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free EBooks

openculture.com

236 pointsyammesicka48 comments

Great to have these, but if you're interested in a classic, five minutes' research will save you a lot of pain. The wrong translation can put you off a book or author for life, and a bad edit, abridgement, or lack of notes can render a work incomprehensible or weak.

Just take a second to look up whether there are any modern translations that might be up your alley, or whether you prefer accuracy over readability, or what have you.

Other than Google or Amazon, where would one research translation bias/quality? Is there a site which reviews all translations for a given work?

I'd really love to know about this as well. I have often wanted this.

Like any other kind of review, you have to take what you can get, and it's difficult to find one source or person who is right for you most of the time. I would look at Amazon reviews and skim for translation notes - "the prose was difficult" or "the dialogue was too colloquial," that sort of thing.

But really the best thing is to decide for yourself. Go to the book store, pick up a couple translations (used book stores usually have quite a few for classics), and read the same five or six paragraphs in each. If there's one you like better, just go for it. Worry about accuracy and scholarly opinion later - your goal should be to read and enjoy the book. If something seems weird later... try the other translation! You should feel no pressure to do one over the other for your first run through.

Thanks. I'm reminded of the comments by Borges translator, Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, on his dispute with the estate. The shared history between Borges & Giovanni undoubtedly influenced his translations, which are now only available as used books, http://www.digiovanni.co.uk/borges.htm

Oh, how interesting, I had no idea. I've been reading Hurley's Borges this whole time (which I understand now is good but not great). Time to order this... thanks for the tip.

Indeed, translations are products of their times, and most casual readers are better served by (non-public domain) contemporary translations. I'm reminded me of something Mary Beard said in a recent interview with the LA Review of Books [1]:

"It's very interesting to look back at classics a hundred years ago. One of the things I've done is look back at Gilbert Murray’s translations of Euripides, which were huge popular success at the time. It seemed to engage with all sorts of political issues of the time. And you look at them now, and they're unreadable."

[1] - http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/visit-mary-beard

There certainly can be misguided or biased translations, but I routinely recommend old ones like the anonymous translations of Dumas and Hugo from the mid-19th c. and Pope's Homer. It's probably worth 2 minutes of research to make sure you didn't get a dud, though.

I remember when I did classical studies (studying the classics in translation) Our teacher commented that as she had been taught by nuns the version of Thucydides that she had read had all the "gay" stuff taken out.

Yeah, there's a gay aspect in the Count of Monte Cristo that got excised or downplayed as well. The question becomes do you want a biased translation that reads better or an unbiased one that reads okay? It's really a case by case thing. Any classicist will tell you Pope butchered the original Homer - he didn't even speak Greek. But his is still the best in English, I think.

Beautiful. Thank you for the reminder that these books exist. I read some of these books years back, and I still treasure the experience. I had a terrible job that started at 6:30 a.m. where by some miracle people kept assigning me tasks that could be automated, so I was about a month ahead on all of my work. In the early mornings I would read from these books on a Dell Axim that was propped up above my keyboard, next to my propped-up reversed CD-ROM disc.

One book that's not part of the collection but that I would recommend to the people here on HN is "James Nasmyth, Engineer: An Autobiography": http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/476

Here's a bit from a "coding interview" that went well for him:

"I carefully unpacked my working model of the steam-engine at the carpenter's shop, and had it conveyed, together with my drawings, on a hand-cart to Mr. Maudslay's next morning at the appointed hour. I was allowed to place my work for his inspection in a room next his office and counting-house. I then called at his residence close by, where he kindly received me in his library. He asked me to wait until he and his partner, Joshua Field, had inspected my handiwork.

I waited anxiously. Twenty long minutes passed. At last he entered the room, and from a lively expression in his countenance I observed in a moment that the great object of my long cherished ambition had been attained! He expressed, in good round terms, his satisfaction at my practical ability as a workman engineer and mechanical draughtsman. Then, opening the door which led from his library into his beautiful private workshop, he said, "This is where I wish you to work, beside me, as my assistant workman. From what I have seen there is no need of an apprenticeship in your case."

He then proceeded to show me the collection of exquisite tools of all sorts with which his private workshop was stored. They mostly bore the impress of his own clearheadedness and common-sense. They were very simple, and quite free from mere traditional forms and arrangements. At the same time they were perfect for the special purposes for which they had been designed. The workshop was surrounded with cabinets and drawers, filled with evidences of the master's skill and industry. Every tool had a purpose. It had been invented for some special reason. Sometimes it struck the keynote, as it were, to many of the important contrivances which enable man to obtain a complete mastery over materials."

Anyway, a pretty fun, educational book for someone with that mindset.

> It was in 1909, the nadir of this milieu, before the advent of modernism and world war, that The Harvard Classics took shape.

I think he means zenith, not nadir. 1909 was the high point of human civilisation, before barbarism and ugliness took hold.

Also, not covering Freud, Nietzsche & Marx was no mistake: this is a collection of lessons to learn, not lessons to learn from.

Really? You think that ancient Greek tragedy are not lessons to learn from?

Um, I think the parent's point was that you learn frm counter-exemples, and you learn examples. I think...

You think 1909 was the high point of human civilisation?

Not the OP, but I think that was the high point of the particular European centric civilization that came out of the Enlightenment. There will be other high points for sure, but each will come when their own civilizations reach maturity.

And no, nobody alive today will see one of those, it is too late in the previous cycle and too early in the next one for that. But you can make the next one happen today by mastering something worthy and passing it on to the next (human) generation. There's people not yet born who will use that as raw material to create stuff that we would not be able to understand even if it hit us in the nose.

My dynamics professor mentioned to me that most of the physics world considered themselves to have conquered human knowledge at the end of the 19th century. The famous apocryphal quote from the head of the patent office saying that everything that could have been invented, had, comes to mind. (http://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everyt...)

I found out from another professor that the first had actually wanted to go into physics in his young life, but was encouraged to get into engineering, since hard science had basically been played out. Of course, the early 20th century took off, and we have the classic picture of Einstein seated with all the other great scientists of the day. This is the group my prof could have rubbed shoulders with, and he was apparently a little bitter about it. I probably would have been too.

Also the bulk of Freud's major works had not been written by 1909.

High point of human civilization? You mean colonialism in its full force, blatant exploitation, racism, etc was its high point? I'll take Europe today over 1909.

I've owned the entire collection including the Shelf Of Fiction. The main thing to consider is that for the works written originally in english or are hard to find these are good resources. For the works which have been translated there are usually much better translations available (and worth paying for).

Very glad to see these freely available though.

Yeah, I have a few Harvards, but really the only reason is the nice binding for a few classic titles. The Arabian Nights is the Lane translation, and if you're going classic, you have to go Burton. Same for a few others - you can go older or newer, but there's no particular reason to go for the Harvards. Same for any big classics set.

That said it's not a bad place to start. I loved the Butler prose translation of the Iliad and Odyssey because it was fun to read and straightforward. Now that I have moved on and love Pope's and Lattimore's, I would recommend those over it - but if someone bought one, I wouldn't "tut tut" or anything.

My advice with translations is always to gather a few, read the first few pages or chapter in each, and go with the one that you like. There's always the chance you'll end up with a Bowdlerized version or something (I did with the Count of Monte Cristo, the old ~1850 anonymous translation) but if you enjoy the book that's what matters - you can always read it again or fill in the blanks.

We need the individual public-domain works to be separated out of the Harvard Classics (or other collections) onto github as individual epub files with unique metadata.

This would simplify discovery of works which are not available elsewhere, as well as discovery of works which have been (re)translated and are available for purchase.

Something like http://openlibrary.com at the level of individual works, assigning unique identifiers to each, since ISBNs were not around back then. Maybe there's already a project or standard within the library community for identifying these works uniquely.

There's also the Gutenberg project[1] which offers a huge variety of classics for free in (almost) every format.

[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/

Just wrote a dirty Ruby script to download them. https://gist.github.com/lasombra/a489f715985715663595

P.S.: This is my first Ruby script. I'm still learning it.

That script comes in very handy. It would've been even more useful if it would name the files according to the book which is insde instead of: harvardclassics28eliouoft

Archive.org has many out-of-copyright books, but there is little support for discovery of "related books" or "all books in a multi-volume series". Sorting by download count within categories is a start, for example:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=mediatype%3A%22texts%22... will lead to The Cambridge History of ___ (geography or topic, e.g. Literature, India) and The Cambridge ___ History (time or topic, e.g. Ancient, Medieval, Natural). Each of these titles are several volumes, 500-1000 pages per volume, covering centuries of events from a British perspective.

German Classics, https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22German%20l...

Eastern Classics, https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Oriental%2...

As a Scot, I was pleasantly surprised to see Robert Burns on the list, but digging around it looks like Burns was a keen supporter of the American Revolution and even wrote a "A Toast for George Washington":

http://burnsc21.glasgow.ac.uk/a-toast-for-george-washington-...

Well, that's one ghastly website you pointed to. I have a physical edition of the Harvard Classics, and it's mostly boring stuff and speeches and political documents that are sufficiently summarized in other contexts (history books, Bartlett's, etc). One book that is worth reading is this (free):

http://www.amazon.com/Years-Before-Mast-Richard-Henry-ebook/...

Summaries just give you the opinion of the person who did the summarizing.

Whoever would like to improve that list at gutenberg.org can follow directions on the site to get access to edit it. I hope they will.

I was glad to see that some like that page. I was actually the one who grabbed that list of contents from Wikipedia, requested access to edit Project Gutenberg's "Bookshelves" wiki, and added the links there to the Project Gutenberg versions of many of the selections. It was fun and not hard.

Followup: The directions that I mentioned are somewhat buried in the site. Here they are: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Wiki

My wife and I recently purchased this entire set, excepting books 1 and 5, at our local library book sale. We are now looking for the missing volumes, so if anyone happens to have them laying around, and would like them to go to a good home, get in touch :)

Try a secondhand book site: I like abebooks.com, and there's also alibris.com. I'm slowly assembling a set of the Oxford Charles Dickens; every few months I pick a title I haven't got and search for a copy that's called "fine" or "very fine". ("Fair" copies are readable but may have markings, highlighting, etc., or be a battered ex-library copy.)

A used books search engine: http://used.addall.com. Bookfinder is owned by Abebooks which is owned by Amazon. Biblio is independent and often price competitive.

I've spent a few years searching these out for fun in second-hand shops and used book stores, avoiding online simply for the thrill of trying to find them on the street. This is fantastic that they are available for free download now!

Once upon a time when I was first learning to program, I wrote a Python script to download them from bartleby.com and make them into nice CHM files :) some good stuff

And if there was ever a testament to why Copyright should expire for the public good, this is it.

There could be a browser plugin which provides links to out-of-print versions of books when they are referenced on a page, e.g. in a bibliography or other list of books.

It's fine to read these for the literature and/or a peek into how earlier people saw their world, but beware of ideas whose underpinnings are still touted as fact - such as those from the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith may have been among the intelligentsia of his time, but he made claims far outside of his expertise which have long since been shown to be fantastical imaginings. And if you've ever seen A Christmas Carol, you'll have passing familiarity with the debtor prisons and Irish potato famines justified by classical liberalism (economic theory, not to be confused with the popular modern term) which has today become neoliberalism (which contains justification for neoconservatism, so let's not get partisan about it) since about 1980 with Reagan in the USA, Thatcher in the UK, and Deng in China and isn't any better for reasons I won't currently go in to. (Crosby, Harvey)

For instance, Adam Smith argued that barter was an inefficient way to make transactions because it required a dual coincidence of wants by both parties. Nevermind that communities simply didn't function this way, instead giving what they had now in a system of credit rather than debt. This is one of many examples undermining Smith's ideas, so be careful if you decide to read such books. Unless your degree concerns historiography, your time would be much better spent elsewhere. (Graeber)

Smith is easy to debunk, but ideas contained within many classical novels provide popular justification for cultural imperialism. They're not so easy to address. (Said)

There was absolutely no need to inject such politics into a seemingly innocent post about a collection of old books. Your topic sentence claimed that you disputed the wisdom of old classics (notice the plural) but really your extended post was a diatribe against The Wealth of Nations and classical free market economics. Save your politics for a political topic.

I really need an extension that hides any post or article that uses the terms neoliberal or neoliberalism.

Why be a minimalist? How about one that hides anything to do with politics.

Justifying bad things with a book is not the same as the book advocating bad things.

I suspect you haven't even read it because Smith gives specific warnings in the text as to where the ideas can come into conflict with social benefit, proposing limits on payable interest for instance.

I didn't say the bad things were done on purpose (when is that ever the case?) and didn't mean to ever suggest such a thing. And I understand your suspicions, but I've read more than just The Wealth of Nations by Smith.

The other comments are such a trainwreck of assumptions that it's not worthwhile to respond, so you've got that going for you.

I would suggest a charitable reading of the Wealth of Nations on its own terms, rather than focusing on narrow Marxist critiques of it. Further, I would suggest reading Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiment for a fuller understanding of his ideas.

garric does have a point. Reading The Origin of Species is a fine and dandy thing, but you shouldn't expect to learn too much relevant to modern biology.

If you're reading Darwin as a biology textbook, you're blowing it from the start, though. It's much more valuable as a primary document in the history of biology. That and from what I understand, it's pretty interesting reading.

Yep! This is why I said it'd be more relevant for historiographers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com