Gateway To The Great Books - Index, Editorial Material, Criticism

Index, Editorial Material, Criticism

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. In what may have been a response to complaints about the cramped typography of the Great Books, the Gateway volumes were single-column with larger, more readable type.

Many of the same criticisms leveled at the Great Books can be made of the Gateway set. The books concentrated heavily on Western European and American literature and included few selections by women or minority authors. The set is now out of print but is easily available from used book websites on the Internet.