Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 12

This is a gateway to the entire written world. Volume 12 of the monumental late 19th-century anthology gathers excerpts spanning millennia: the ancient wails of Babylonian mythology alongside the intimate letters of Abigail Adams to her niece, Addison's elegant 18th-century essays beside the philosophical fragments of Diogenes Laertius. Denis Diderot brings the fire of the French Enlightenment, while Crawford H. Toy renders the theogony of Sumer into English. Here too are the Founding Fathers themselves , John Adams negotiating at the French court, his son John Quincy delivering Fourth of July orations that still ring with republican conviction. The selection moves from the river-god Tiamat's revolt to the Acadian exile, from Abelard and Heloise's forbidden correspondence to Sarah Flower Adams' hymn that would one day become Lincoln's favorite. What emerges is not mere compilation but a Victorian vision of what humanity has said to itself across borders and centuries , a literary treasury curated for American households hungry for the best that exists in the world.