本书精选19世纪末20世纪初英国散文名家包括罗素、普莱斯利、萧伯纳、毛姆、吉辛、康拉德、E．M．福斯特、高尔斯华绥、赫胥黎、弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫等的散文40篇，附有作者简介、详尽的注释及三篇论述英国散文的文章。本书选文精当，注释详尽，可较大程度地提高中级以上英语学习者对现代英国散文的了解和鉴赏。钱锺书先生和陆谷孙先生分别为本书初版和新版作序。本书可用作高等院校英语专业教材，也可供其他英语爱好者阅读参考之用。

1.Chinese and Western Civilization Contrasted

Bertrand Russell

2.Rivalry

E.V.Lucas

3.The Successful Doctor

George Bernard Shaw

4.Leisure

Vernon Lee

5.Poetry and University Education

Arthur Quiller-Couch

6.A Relic

Max Beerbohm

7.From the Mouse's Point of View

Lord Dunsany

8.Romance

W.Somerset Maugham

9.On Being Hard Up

Jerome K.Jerome

10.Confidence

Joseph Conrad

11.The Drawing-Room

Mary E.Coleridge

12.Evolution

John Galsworthy

13.On Poverty

Hilaire Belloc

14.On Destroying Books

J.C.Squire

15.The Patron and the Crocus

Virginia Woolf

16.Fog

G.S.Street

17.Fact and Fiction

John Middleton Murry

18.Her Own Village

W.H.Hudson

19.Signs of Character

A.A.Milne

20.The Wife

H.V.Morton

21.Conversation

A.C.Benson

22.The Return from Siwa

E.M.Forster

23.On Running After One's Hat

G.K.Chesterton

24.The Rose

Logan Pearsall Smith

25.Sunday Before the War

A.Clutton-Brock

26.Laughter in Court

Beverley Nichols

27.The Traveller's Eye View

Aldous Huxley

28.Fifield Ashes

Maurice Henry Hewlett

29.The Barber

Arnold Bennett

30.Marriage

Y.Y.

31.Set Free

R.B.Cunninghame Graham

32.This England

Edward Thomas

33.On Man's Extravagance

J.B.Priestley

34.Actors

Augustine Birrell

35.An Afternoon Walk in October

William Hale White

36.On Talking to One's Self

A.G.Gardiner

37.Cloud

Alice Meynell

38.Selections from The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

George Gissing

39.Boswell's Life of Johnson

George Gordon

40.Bed-Books and Night-Lights

H.M.Tomlinson

Appendix

1.The English Essayist

John Freeman

2.The Art of the Essayist

A.C.Benson

3.The Defects of English Prose

Arthur Clutton-Brock