Books from the Great Books of the Western World (R) Collection

Books from the Great Books of the Western World (R) Collection is based on the table of contents of the 54-volume first edition published by Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. in 1952.

You can find a used copy of that edition at Amazon for about $300. And Britannica sells the current edition directly online for $1195.00. (You can see details at the Britannica (R) Store) This CD sells for just $29.

This CD contains electronic versions of about two thirds of the works in that printed book collection. The Table of Contents (below) shows the organization by volume of the original collection. The folders/directories are organized by author. Books originally written in languages other than English appear on the CD in English translation, but often not the same translation as the printed collection. The books themselves are in the public domain and in plain text format. No content specially written for the printed collection, such as commentaries or introductions, is included here.

Of the 54 volumes, this CD contains the complete or nearly complete contents of 29 volumes and partial contents of 14 volumes. It omits the contents of 11 volumes. Omissions are noted in the Table of Contents in brackets and with the word "unavailable".

Great Books of the Western World (R) and Britannica (R) are Trademarks of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Intended for use with PCs (Windows or Linux) and recent Macs (OS X), our books are in plain-text format, not audio or video. You read them on your computer screen.

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Questions? If Richard Seltzer, who created this CD, is online now, you can chat with him immediately by clicking on his photo (below). If he is offline, you can send him an email by clicking on his photo.

Table of Contents

Volume 1
[The Great Conversation = commentary of the collection -- unavailable]

Volume 2
[Syntopicon I: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, and Love = more commentary on the collection -- unavailable]

Volume 3
[Syntopicon II: Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, and World = still more commentary on the collection -- unavailable]

Volume 4

• Homer
• The Iliad
• The Odyssey

Volume 5

Aeschylus

• Four plays
• The Suppliant Maidens
• The Persians
• Seven Against Thebes
• Prometheus Bound
• The Oresteia or The House of Atreus
• Agamemnon
• Choephoroe or The Libation-Bearers
• The Eumenides or The Furies
• Sophocles
• Seven Plays
• The Oedipus Cycle
• Oedipus the King
• Oedipus at Colonus
• Antigone
• Ajax or Aias
• Electra
• The Trachiniae or The Trachinian Maidens
• Philoctetes
• Euripides
• The Tragedies of Euripides, volume 1
• Hecuba
• Orestes
• Phoenician Women
• Medea
• Hippolytus
• Alcestis
• Bacchantes
• Heracleidae
• Iphigeneia at Aulis
• Iphigeneia in Tauris
• [Rhesus, The Suppliants, Trojan Women, Ion, Helen, Andromache, Electra, Heracles Mad, Cyclops -- not available]
• Aristophanes
• Eleven Comedies volume 1
• The Knights
• The Acharnians
• Peace
• Lysistrata
• The Clouds
• Eleven Comedies volume 2
• The Wasps
• The Birds
• The Frogs
• Thesmophoriazusae
• Ecclesiazousae
• Plutus

Volume 6

• Herodotus
• The History
• volume 1
• volume 2
• Thucydides
• The History of the Peloponnesian War

Volume 7

• Plato
• Charmides
• Lysis
• Laches
• Protagoras
• Euthydemus
• Cratylus
• Phaedrus
• Ion
• Symposium
• Meno
• Euthyphro
• Apology
• Crito
• Phaedo
• Gorgias
• The Republic
• Timaeus
• Critias
• Parmenides
• Theaetetus
• Sophist
• Statesman
• Philebus
• Laws
• [The Seventh Letter -- not available]

Volume 8

• Aristotle
• Categories
• [On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, On Sophistical Refutations, Physics, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology, Metaphysics, On the Soul, Minor biological works -- unavailable]

Volume 9

• Aristotle
• Nicomachean Ethics
• Politics
• Poetics
• [History of Animals, On the Parts of Animals, On the Motion of Animals, On the Gait of Animals, On the Generation of Animals, The Athenian Constitution, Rhetoric -- unavailable]

[Volume 10 -- unavailable]

• Hippocrates
• Works
• Galen
• On the Natural Faculties

Volume 11

• Euclid
• The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements
• The First Six books (.pdf file)
• [books 7 to 13 -- unavailable]
• [Archimedes -- unavailable]
• On the Sphere and Cylinder
• Measurement of a Circle
• On Conoids and Pheroids
• On Spirals
• On the Equilibrium of Planes
• The Sand-Reckoner
• The Quadrature of the Parabola
• On Floating Bodies
• Book of Lemmas
• The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems
• [Apollonius of Perga -- unavailable]
• On Conic Sections
• [Nicomachus of Gerasa -- unavailable]
• Introduction to Arithmetic

Volume 12

• Lucretius
• Of the Nature of Things
• Epictetus
• The Discourses
• Marcus Aurelius
• The Meditations

Volume 13

• Virgil
• The Eclogues
• The Georgics
• The Aeneid

Volume 14

• Plutarch
• The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Volume 15

• P. Cornelius Tacitus
• [The Annals -- unavailable]
• The Histories, volumes 1 and 2 = books 1 to 5

[Volume 16 -- unavailable]

• Ptolemy
• The Almagest
• Nicolaus Copernicus
• On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres
• Johannes Kepler
• Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV - V)
• The Harmonies of the World (Book V)

[Volume 17 -- unavailable]

• Plotinus
• The Six Enneads

Volume 18

• Augustine of Hippo
• The Confessions
• The City of God
• On Christian Doctrine

Volume 19

• Thomas Aquinas
• Summa Theologica (First part complete, selections from second part)
• part 1
• first part of part 2

Volume 20

• Thomas Aquinas
• Summa Theologica (Selections from second and third parts and supplement)
• second part of part 2
• part 3

Volume 21

• Dante Alighieri
• The Divine Comedy

Volume 22

• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Troilus and Criseyde
• The Canterbury Tales
• Canterbury Tales and Other Poems (including Troilus and Cressida)

Volume 23

• Niccolò Machiavelli
• The Prince
• Thomas Hobbes
• Leviathan

Volume 24

• François Rabelais
• Gargantua and Pantagruel
• book 1
• book 2
• book 3
• book 4
• book 5

Volume 25

• Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
• Essays
• volume 1
• volume 2
• volume 3
• volume 4
• volume 5
• volume 6
• volume 7
• volume 8
• volume 9
• volume 10

Volume 26

• William Shakespeare
• The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
• The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
• The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth
• The Tragedy of Richard the Third
• The Comedy of Errors
• Titus Andronicus
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• Love's Labour's Lost
• Romeo and Juliet
• The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
• A Midsummer-Night's Dream
• The Life and Death of King John
• The Merchant of Venice
• The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
• The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
• Much Ado About Nothing
• The Life of King Henry the Fifth
• Julius Caesar
• As You Like It

Volume 27

• William Shakespeare
• Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• Troilus and Cressida
• All's Well That Ends Well
• Measure For Measure
• Othello, the Moor of Venice
• King Lear
• Macbeth
• Antony and Cleopatra
• Coriolanus
• Timon of Athens
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre
• Cymbeline
• The Winter's Tale
• The Tempest
• The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth
• Sonnets

[Volume 28 -- unavailable]

• William Gilbert
• On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
• Galileo Galilei
• Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
• William Harvey
• On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
• On the Circulation of Blood
• On the Generation of Animals

Volume 29

• Miguel de Cervantes
• The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha

Volume 30

• Sir Francis Bacon
• Advancement of Learning
• New Atlantis
• [Novum Organum -- unavailable]

Volume 31

• René Descartes
• Discourse on the Method
• Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Meditations on First Philosophy, Objections Against the Meditations and Replies, The Geometry, Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics -- unavailable]

Volume 32

• John Milton
• English Minor Poems
• Paradise Lost
• Samson Agonistes
• Poetical Works (contains all of the above)
• Areopagitica

Volume 33

• Blaise Pascal
• Pensées or Thoughts
• [The Provincial Letters. Scientific and mathematical essays -- unavailable]

Volume 34

• Sir Isaac Newton
• [Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Optics -- unavailable]
• Christian Huygens
• Treatise on Light

Volume 35

• John Locke
• Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay
• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• volume 1 (books 1 and 2)
• volume 2 (books 3 and 4)
• [A Letter Concerning Toleration -- unavailable]
• George Berkeley
• The Principles of Human Knowledge
• David Hume
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Volume 36

• Jonathan Swift
• Gulliver's Travels
• Laurence Sterne
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Volume 37

• Henry Fielding
• The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Volume 38

• Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
• [The Spirit of the Laws -- unavailable]
• Jean Jacques Rousseau
• A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
• [A Discourse on Political Economy, The Social Contract -- unavailable]

Volume 39

• Adam Smith
• An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Volume 40

• Edward Gibbon
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 1)
• volume 1
• volume 2
• volume 3

Volume 41

• Edward Gibbon
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 2)
• volume 4
• volume 5
• volume 6

Volume 42

• Immanuel Kant
• The Critique of Pure Reason
• Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
• Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics with a note on Conscience
• [The Critique of Practical Reason, Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals, General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals, The Science of Right, The Critique of Judgement -- unavaialble]

Volume 43

• American State Papers
• Declaration of Independence
• Articles of Confederation
• The Constitution of the United States of America
• Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
• The Federalist
• John Stuart Mill
• Considerations on Representative Government
• Utilitarianism
• [On Liberty -- unavailable]

Volume 44

• James Boswell
• The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Volume 45

• Michael Faraday
• Experimental Researches in Electricity
• Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
• [Elements of Chemistry -- unavailable]
• Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
• [Analytical Theory of Heat -- unavailable]

[Volume 46 -- unavailable]

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• The Philosophy of Right
• The Philosophy of History

Volume 47

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Faust

Volume 48

• Herman Melville
• Moby Dick; or, The Whale

Volume 49

• Charles Darwin
• The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
• The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

Volume 50

• Karl Marx
• [Capital -- unavailable]
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
• Manifesto of the Communist Party

Volume 51

• Count Leo Tolstoy
• War and Peace

[Volume 52 -- unavailable

• Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
• The Brothers Karamazov

[Volume 53 -- unavailable]

• William James
• The Principles of Psychology

[Volume 54 -- still under copyright, unavailable]

• Sigmund Freud
• The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
• Selected Papers on Hysteria
• The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
• The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy
• Observations on "Wild" Psycho-Analysis
• The Interpretation of Dreams
• On Narcissism
• Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
• Repression
• The Unconscious
• A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
• The Ego and the Id
• Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
• Thoughts for the Times on War and Death
• Civilization and Its Discontents
• New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis