From the Preface: “This volume is the first in a series of four books that provide material for an organized course in literature for secondary schools. In this series literature is regarded not as an end in itself, a subject in which facts are to be collected and memorized, but as an instrument through which the pupil may be initiated into the spiritual heritage stored up for him in books. ……..the range in time is from Homer to the present. Of the fifty or more authors represented, one half are masters of former times whose works have become classics: the other half are recent or contemporary writers who are recognized interpreters of our own time.”