Presenta anotación manuscrita en tinta en portada.

The choice of books -- Chapter I : How to read -- Chapter II : Poets of the Old World -- Chapter III : Poets of the Modern World -- Chapter IV : The misuse of books -- Culture: a dialogue -- Past and present: a letter to Mr. Ruskin -- The romance of the Peerage -- Froude's love to Carlyle -- The Life of George Eliot -- Historic London -- The aesthete -- At Burlington House -- Bernard of Clairvaux: a type of the twelfth century -- A few words about the eighteeth century -- Histories of the French Revolution -- A few words about the nineteenth century.

"This volume consists of essays and lectures, written at various times during the last twenty years, which I have been often urged to arrange in permanent form. It deals solely with books, art, and history- not with politics, philosophy or religion; nor does it touch on any controversy but the perennial problems presented to us by literature and the study of the Past", Prefacio.