This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
The genesis of the University Library lies in a compilation of "Little Masterpieces," the first of which were published more than twenty-five years ago. The material included in these volumes was selected by able editors and writers whose experience was great and whose taste was excellent. Out of the "Little Masterpieces" grew a course in liberal education which was known as the Pocket University, and out of the Pocket University grew, finally, the University Library. The publishers most gratefully acknowledge their debt to the editors who compiled the original volumes: Bliss Perry, Henry van Dyke, Hardin Craig, Thomas L. Masson, Asa Don Dickinson, the late Hamilton W. Mabie, George Iles, the late Dr. Lyman Abbott, and others. Some of the most important material contained in the Pocket University is, of course, included in the University Library but the sequence has been entirely changed and the scope of the work greatly broadened. Fully two thirds of the material is new and the literature of the world has been ransacked to find appropriate text to fit the basic educational needs of the modern public. - Publisher' s note
