LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE, ANCIENT AND MODERN, VOL. I

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

EDITOR

HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE
GEORGE HENRY WARNER

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Connoisseur Edition






PREFACE


The plan of this Work is simple, and yet it is novel. In its distinctive
features it differs from any compilation that has yet been made. Its
main purpose is to present to American households a mass of good
reading. But it goes much beyond this. For in selecting this reading it
draws upon all literatures of all time and of every race, and thus
becomes a conspectus of the thought and intellectual evolution of man
from the beginning. Another and scarcely less important purpose is the
interpretation of this literature in essays by scholars and authors