Gateway to the Great Books is a 10-volume series of books originally published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. in 1963 and edited by Mortimer Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins. The set was designed as an introduction to the Great Books of the Western World, published by the same organization and editors in 1952. The set included selections – short stories, plays, essays, letters, and extracts from longer works – by more than one hundred authors. The selections were generally shorter and in some ways simpler than the full-length books included in the Great Books.
A number of authors in the Great Books set – such as Plutarch, Epictetus, Tacitus, Dante, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin and William James – were also represented by shorter works in the Gateway volumes. And several Gateway readings discussed authors in the Great Books series. For instance, a selection from Henry Adams' Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres critiqued the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Indeed, many writers in the Gateway set were eventually "promoted" to the second edition (1990) of the Great Books, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Molière, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Albert Einstein and John Dewey.
The set included an index similar to the Great Books' Syntopicon, along with reading plans of increasing difficulty. Hutchins contributed an introduction that was essentially a boiled-down version of the Great Conversation, his preface to the Great Books. The set contained biographical notes on the various authors, similar to those in the Great Books. However, the set also contained editorial introductions to the selections, which were generally not included in the Great Books. In another departure from the Great Books series, the set included black-and-white drawings of most of the authors by Chicago portraitist Fred Steffen, who also wrote brief notes describing the illustrations. Details from a number of these drawings were featured on the volume covers.
Although the editors maintained that many selections were appropriate to readers as young as seventh-grade students, the set included a fair amount of material challenging for the most experienced reader. The Gateway volumes were single-column with large, readable type.
The set is now out of print.
Volume 1: Introduction; Syntopical Guide
A letter to the readerIntroductionSyntopical guideAppendicesA plan of graded readingRecommended novelsRecommended anthologies of poetryVolume 2: Imaginative Literature I
Daniel Defoe, Excerpts from Robinson CrusoeRudyard Kipling, "Mowgli's Brothers" from The Jungle BookVictor Hugo, "The Battle with the Cannon" from Ninety-ThreeGuy de Maupassant, "Two Friends"Ernest Hemingway, "The Killers" from Men Without WomenSir Walter Scott, "The Two Drovers" from Chronicles of the CanongateJoseph Conrad, "Youth"Voltaire, MicromégasOscar Wilde, "The Happy Prince" from The Happy Prince and Other TalesEdgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"; "The Masque of the Red Death"Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeMark Twain (Samuel Clemens), The Man That Corrupted HadleyburgCharles Dickens, "A Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick" from The Pickwick PapersNikolai Gogol, "The Overcoat"Samuel Butler, "Customs and Opinions of the Erewhonians" from ErewhonSherwood Anderson, "I'm a Fool"Anonymous, Aucassin and NicoletteVolume 3: Imaginative Literature II
Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat"Herman Melville, "Billy Budd"Ivan Bunin, "The Gentleman from San Francisco"Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Rappaccini's Daughter"George Eliot, "The Lifted Veil"Lucius Apuleius, "Cupid and Psyche" from The Golden AssIvan Turgenev, "First Love"Fyodor Dostoevsky, "White Nights"John Galsworthy, "The Apple-Tree"Gustave Flaubert, "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller"F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"Honoré de Balzac, "A Passion in the Desert"Anton Chekhov, "The Darling"Isaac Singer, "The Spinoza of Market Street"Alexander Pushkin, "The Queen of Spades"D. H. Lawrence, "The Rocking-Horse Winner"Henry James, "The Pupil"Thomas Mann, "Mario and the Magician"Isak Dinesen, "Sorrow-Acre"Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"; "The Three Hermits"; "What Men Live By"Volume 4: Imaginative Literature III
Molière, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of HimselfRichard Sheridan, The School for ScandalHenrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the PeopleAnton Chekhov, The Cherry OrchardGeorge Bernard Shaw, The Man of DestinyJohn Synge, Riders to the SeaEugene O'Neill, The Emperor JonesVolume 5: Critical Essays
Virginia Woolf, "How Should One Read a Book?"Matthew Arnold, "The Study of Poetry"; "Sweetness and Light"Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, "What Is a Classic?"; "Montaigne"Francis Bacon, "Of Beauty"; "Of Discourse"; "Of Studies"David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste"Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Style"; "On Some Forms of Literature"; "On the Comparative Place of Interest and Beauty in Works of Art"Friedrich Schiller, "On Simple and Sentimental Poetry"Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defence of Poetry"Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of GrassWilliam Hazlitt, "My First Acquaintance with Poets", "On Swift", "Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen"Charles Lamb, "My First Play", "Dream Children, a Reverie", "Sanity of True Genius"Samuel Johnson, Preface to ShakespeareThomas de Quincey, Literature of Knowledge and Literature of Power", "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth"T. S. Eliot, "Dante", "Tradition and the Individual Talent"Volume 6: Man and Society I
John Stuart Mill, "Childhood and Youth" from AutobiographyMark Twain, "Learning the River" from Life on the MississippiJean de La Bruyère, "Characters" from A Book of CharactersThomas Carlyle, 'The Hero as King" from On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in HistoryRalph Waldo Emerson, "Thoreau"Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Sketch of Abraham Lincoln"Walt Whitman, "Death of Abraham Lincoln"Virginia Woolf, "The Art of Biography"Xenophon, "The March to the Sea" from The Persian Expedition; "The Character of Socrates" from MemorabiliaWilliam H. Prescott, "The Land of Montezuma" from The Conquest of MexicoHaniel Long, "The Power within Us"Pliny the Younger, "The Eruption of Vesuvius"Tacitus, "The Life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola"François Guizot, "Civilization" from History of Civilization in EuropeHenry Adams, "The United States in 1800" from History of the United States of AmericaJohn Bagnell Bury, "Herodotus" from The Ancient Greek HistoriansLucian, "The Way to Write History"Great DocumentsThe English Bill of RightsDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the CitizenThe Virginia Declaration of RightsThe Declaration of IndependenceCharter of the United NationsUniversal Declaration of Human RightsThomas Paine, "A Call to Patriots – December 23, 1776"George Washington, "Circular Letter to the Governors of All the States on Disbanding the Army"; "The Farewell Address"Thomas Jefferson, "The Virginia Constitution" from Notes on the State of Virginia; "First Inaugural Address"; "Biographical Sketches"Benjamin Franklin, "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America", "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania"Jean de Crevecoeur, "The Making of Americans" from Letters from an American FarmerAlexis de Tocqueville, "Observations on American Life and Government" from Democracy in AmericaHenry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"; "A Plea for Captain John Brown"Abraham Lincoln, "Address at Cooper Institute"; "First Inaugural Address"; "Letter to Horace Greeley", "Meditation on the Divine Will"; "The Gettysburg Address"; "Second Inaugural Address"; "Last Public Address"Volume 7: Man and Society II
Francis Bacon, "Of Youth and Age", "Of Parents and Children", "Of Marriage and Single Life", "Of Great Place", "Of Seditions and Troubles", "Of Custom and Education", "Of Followers and Friends", "Of Usury", "Of Riches"Jonathan Swift, "Resolutions when I Come to Be Old", "An Essay on Modern Education", "A Meditation upon a Broomstick", "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country"David Hume, "Of Refinement in the Arts"; "Of Money"; "Of the Balance of Trade"; "Of Taxes"; "Of the Study of History"Plutarch, "Of Bashfulness"Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Lantern-Bearers" from Across the PlainsJohn Ruskin, "An Idealist's Arraignment of the Age" from Four ClavigeraWilliam James, "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings", "The Energies of Men", "Great Men and Their Environment"Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Education"Michael Faraday, "Observations on Mental Education"Edmund Burke, "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol"John Calhoun, "The Concurrent Majority"Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Machiavelli"Voltaire, "English Men and Ideas" from Letters on the EnglishDante, "On World Government" from De MonarchiaJean-Jacques Rousseau, "A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe"Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace"Carl von Clausewitz, "What Is War?" from On WarThomas Robert Malthus, "The Principle of Population" from Population: The First EssayVolume 8: Natural Science
Francis Bacon, "The Sphinx"John Tyndall, "Michael Faraday" from Faraday as a DiscovererÈve Curie, "The Discovery of Radium" from Madame CurieCharles Darwin, "Autobiography"Jean-Henri Fabre, "A Laboratory of the Open Fields"; "The Sacred Beetle"Loren Eiseley, "On Time"Rachel Carson, "The Sunless Sea" from The Sea Around UsJ. B. S. Haldane, "On Being the Right Size" from Possible WorldsThomas Henry Huxley, "On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals", "On a Piece of Chalk"Francis Galton, "The Classification of Human Ability" from Hereditary GeniusClaude Bernard, "Experimental Considerations Common to Living Things and Inorganic Bodies"Ivan Pavlov, "Scientific Study of the So-called Psychical Processes in the Higher Animals"Friedrich Wöhler, "On the Artificial Production of Urea"Charles Lyell, "Geological Evolution" from Principles of GeologyGalileo, "The Starry Messenger"Tommaso Campanella, "Arguments for and against Galileo" from The Defense of GalileoMichael Faraday, The Chemical History of a CandleDmitri Mendeleev, "The Genesis of a Law of Nature" from The Periodic Law of the Chemical ElementsHermann von Helmholtz, "On the Conservation of Force"Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, "The Rise and Decline of Classical Physics" from The Evolution of PhysicsArthur Eddington, "The Running-Down of the Universe" from Nature and the Physical WorldJames Jeans, "Beginnings and Endings" from The Universe Around UsKees Boeke, "Cosmic View"Volume 9: Mathematics
Lancelot Hogben, "Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilization" from Mathematics for the MillionAndrew Russell Forsyth, "Mathematics, in Life and Thought"Alfred North Whitehead, "On Mathematical Method" from An Introduction to Mathematics, "On the Nature of a Calculus"Bertrand Russell, "The Study of Mathematics", "Mathematics and the Metaphysicians", "Definition of Number"Edward Kasner and James R. Newman, "New Names for Old", "Beyond the Googol"Tobias Dantzig, "Fingerprints", "The Empty Column"Leonhard Euler, "The Seven Bridges of Königsberg "Norman Robert Campbell, "Measurement", "Numerical Laws and the Use of Mathematics in Science"William Clifford, "The Postulates of the Science of Space"Henri Poincaré, "Space", "Mathematical Creation"; "Chance"Pierre-Simon Laplace, "Probability" from A Philosophical Essay on ProbabilitiesCharles Sanders Peirce, "The Red and the Black"Volume 10: Philosophical Essays
John Erskine, "The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent"William Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief"William James, "The Will to Believe", "The Sentiment of Rationality"John Dewey, "The Process of Thought" from How We ThinkEpicurus, "Letter to Herodotus"; "Letter to Menoeceus"Epictetus, The EnchiridionWalter Pater, "The Art of Life" from The RenaissancePlutarch, "Contentment"Cicero, "On Friendship"; "On Old Age"Francis Bacon, "Of Truth"; "Of Death"; "Of Adversity"; "Of Love"; "Of Friendship"; "Of Anger"George Santayana, "Lucretius"; "Goethe's Faust"Henry Adams, "St. Thomas Aquinas" from Mont-Saint-Michel and ChartresVoltaire, "The Philosophy of Common Sense"John Stuart Mill, "Nature"Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"; "Self-Reliance"; "Montaigne; or, the Skeptic"William Hazlitt, "On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth"Thomas Browne, "Immortality" from Urn-Burial