Harvard Classics Volume 39
Prefaces & ProloguesThe Harvard Classics Volume 39 (Prefaces and Prologues) Published 1910
Edited by Charles W Eliot LL D. (March 20, 1834 - August 22, 1926)
Prefaces and Prologues
From the Introductory Note:
No part of a book is so intimate as the Preface. Here, after the long labor of the work is over, the author descends from his platform, and speaks with his reader as man to man, disclosing his hopes and fears, seeking sympathy for his difficulties, offering defence or defiance, according to his temper, against the criticisms which he anticipates. It thus happens that a personality which has been veiled by a formal method throughout many chapters, is suddenly seen face to face in the Preface; and this alone, if there were no other reason, would justify a volume of Prefaces.
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The contributing authors include
William Caxton
John Calvin
Nicolaus Copernicus
John Knox
Edmund Spenser
Sir Walter Raleigh
Francis Bacon
Henrie Condell and Iohn Heminge
Sir Isaac Newton
John Dryden
Henry Fielding
Samuel Johnson
J. W. von Goethe
William Wordsworth
Victor Hugo
Walt Whitman
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine