This is a beautiful and extremely rare 43-volume collection from the limited first edition Harvard Classics with the Celebrated Historic Bindings with gold page tops published in 1909/1910. 

The books in this set are cloth bound in 10 different shades with decorations from famous bindings embossed onto the front covers with gold embellishments and raised bands on the spine.  Also included are 6 original tuck-in sheets with descriptions of the bindings.  

A small amount of age-related cover and spine wear to antique books over 100 years old as can be seen in the pictures.

The set measures 61" across, 5.25" front to back, and is 8" tall.

Included are:

1) Franklin, Woolman, Penn
2) Plato, Epictetus, Marcus, Aurelius
3) Bacon, Milton's Prose, Thomas Browne
4) Complete Poems in English: Milton
5) Essays and English Traits: Emerson
6) Poems and Songs: Burns
7) Confessions of St. Augustine. Imitation of Christ 
9) Letters and Treatises of Cicero and Pliny 
13) Aeneid Virgil 
14) Don Quixote Part 1: Cervantes 
15)Pilgrim's Progress. Donne and Herbert. Bunyan, Walton 
17) Folk-Lore and Fable. Aesop, Grimm, Andersen 
18) Modern English Drama 
19) Faust, Egmont Etc. Doctor Faustus, Goethe, Marlowe 
21) I Promessi Sposi, Manzoni 
23) Two Years Before the Mast. Dana 
24) On the Sublime French Revolution Etc. Burke
25) Autobiography Etc. Essays and Addresses: J.S. Mill, T. Carlyle
26) Continental Drama
27) English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay
28) Essays. English and American 
29) Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin 
30) Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Newcomb
31) Autobiography: Benvenuto, Cellini 
32) Literary and Philosophical Essays: Montaigne, Sainte Beuve, Renan 
33) Voyages and Travels 
34) Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes 
35) Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed 
36) Machiavelli, More, Luther 
37) Locke, Berkeley, Hume 
38) Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur
39) Famous Prefaces 
40) English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray 
41) English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald 
42) English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman 
43) American Historical Documents 
44) Sacred Writings 1 
45) Sacred Writings 2 
46) Elizabethan Drama 1 
47) Elizabethan Drama 2 
48) Thoughts and Minor Works: Pascal 
49) Epic and Saga 
50) Introduction, Readers Guide, Indexes 
No Number) Lectures 

 In 1909, the President of Harvard University, Dr. Eliot made claims that one could get a quality education by reading from three-feet-shelf of classics for 15 minutes a day, later changing it to five feet. Collier & Son challenged Dr. Eliot to create such a collection, the first collection of which was published in 1909. Thses are from the rare edition with the Celebrated Historical BIndings publishes as a luxury version.