If Harvard can be said to have a literature all its own, then few universities can equal it in scope. Here lies the reason for this anthology—a collection of what Harvard men (teachers, students, graduates) have written about Harvard in the more than three centuries of its history. The emphasis is upon entertainment, upon readability; and the selections have been arranged to show something of the many variations of Harvard life.

For all Harvard men—and that part of the general public which is interested in American college life—here is a rich treasury. In such a Harvard collection one may expect to find the giants of Harvard’s last 75 years—Eliot, Lowell, and Conant—attempting a definition of what Harvard means. But there are many other familiar names—Henry Dunster, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Henry Adams, Charles M. Flandrau, William and Henry James, Owen Wister, Thomas Wolfe, John P. Marquaud. Here is Mistress Eaton’s confession about the bad fish served to the wretched students of Harvard’s early years; here too is President Holyoke’s account of the burning of Harvard Hall; a student’s description of his trip to Portsmouth with that aged and Johnsonian character, Tutor Henry Flynt; Cleveland Amory’s retelling of the murder of Dr. George Parkman; Mayor Quiney’s story of what happened in Cambridge when Andrew Jackson came to get an honorary degree; Alistair Cooke’s commentary on the great Harvard–Yale cricket match of 1951. There are many sorts of Harvard men in this book—popular fellows like Hammersmith, snobs like Bertie and Billy, the sensitive and the lonely like Edwin Arlington Robinson and Thomas Wolfe, and independent thinkers like John Reed. Teachers and pupils, scholars and sports, heroes and rogues pass across the Harvard stage through the struggles and the tragedies to the moments of triumph like the Bicentennial or the visit of Winston Churchill.

And speaking of visits, there are the visitors too—the first impressions of Harvard set down by an assortment of travelers as various as Dickens, Trollope, Rupert Brooke, Harriet Martineau, and Francisco de Miranda, the “precursor of Latin American independence.”

For the Harvard addict this volume is indispensable. For the general reader it is the sort of book that goes with a good living-room fire or the blissful moments of early to bed.

The Harvard Guide has a long and distinguished history in the annals of reference works. First prepared in 1896 by Albert Bushnell Hart and Edward Channing, it was a unique scholarly tool. Revised in 1912 by Hart, Channing, and Frederick Jackson Turner, the Guide carried its entries through 1910 and became the standard text.

In 1954 the Harvard Guide to American History appeared, prepared and edited by members of the History Department of Harvard: Oscar Handlin, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Samuel Eliot Morison, Frederick Merk, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., and Paul Herman Buck. A one-volume compendium, the Guide became a classic in historical studies and won a place in every important library—both public and private—of American history.

With its revised republication in 1974, Frank Freidel and Richard K. Showman have made the Guide the most essential reference book for historians. Their work was sponsored by the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard. This thoroughly revised, comprehensive guide to American history reflects the explosive growth in historical publications and materials, and the expanding interests of American historians. About one third of the entries are new. These not only represent the surge of books and articles, but also reflect new areas of history. The brief topical sections in the last edition have grown into a 300-page coverage of economic, social, and intellectual history. Demography, social structure, ethnicity, and the new urban and cultural dimensions of history find a place. Colonial history receives both topical and chronological treatment in an all-inclusive section. United States history since 1759, primarily political and diplomatic, appears in the familiar chronological form.

Enlarged and up-to-date sections cover research methods and material. There are practical suggestions on research, writing, and publication, and extensive citation of finding aids and bibliographies to introduce the user to collections of printed materials, public documents, microform, manuscripts, and archives. The section on care and editing of manuscripts, long standard on the subject, appears unchanged; other sections, such as those on automated data retrieval, quantitative techniques, and oral history, reflect innovations in the historian’s craft. The new Guide has been recast in columnar form to make it easier to locate references and includes cross-reference by pages and sections to facilitate faster use.