本书是为国内广大英语爱好者和大学英语专业的学生学习英国文学的需要而专门编辑的。该书具有如下几个特点：史选结合，以史为主，以选为辅；时代背景和作者生平介绍尽量简略，文学流派和重要作家的代表性作品的艺术分析尽量详尽；以时间为主线安排材料，按作家的重要程度确定其篇幅长短；全部用英文，语言力求简洁生动，通俗易懂；简史对每个作家的处理分为：a）生平及主要作品介绍；b）重点作品主题和艺术分析；c）成就和影响；选读的结构安排为：a）作者简介；b）作品题解；c）选文；d）注释；e）思考题；在作家作品的入选标准上，既尊重多数学者的共识，也显示个人。

Chapter One Old and Medieval Literature

 Old English Literature (450-- 1066)

    Beowulf

    Other Poems

    Prose

 Middle English Literature (1066--1485)

    The Gawain Poet

    Other Poets

    Geoffrey Chaucer ( 1340 -- 1400)

Chapter Two Renaissance and Reformation Literature 

Background

Thomas More (1478-- 1535 )

 Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503--1542) and Henry Howard

The Earl of Surrey (1518--1547)

Sir Philip Sidney (1554--1586) and Walter Raleigh

 (1527--1618)

Edmund Spenser (1552-- 1599)

Early Drama

    The University Wits

    Christopher Marlowe (1564-- 1593)

 William Shakespeare (1564--1616)

Chapter Three The 17th Century

 Shakespeare's Successors

    Ben Jonson (1573--1637)

    Other Playwrights

John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets

John Milton (1608--1674)

 Prose

    Francis Bacon (1561--1626)

    The English Bible

    Other Prose Writers

John Bunyan (1628--1688)

John Dryden (1631--1700)

Chapter Four The 18th Century

 Prose

    Jonathan Swift (1667--1745)

 The Rise of the Novel

    Daniel Defoe (1660--1731)

    Samuel Richardson ( 1689-- 1761)

    Henry Fielding (1707--1754)

    Tobias Smollett (1721--1771)

 Poetry

    Alexander Pope (1688--1744)

    Thomas Gray (1716--1771)

 Late 18th Century Literature

    Oliver Goldsmith (1730--1774)

    Laurence Sterne (1713--1768)

    Samuel Johnson (1709--1784)

    Richard Sheridan (1751 -- 1816)

    Edward Gibbon (1737--1794)

    Edmund Burke (1729--1797)

    The Gothic Novel

    Robert Burns (1759--1796)

Chapter Five The Age of Romanticism (1790--1840)

Background

Romantic Poets

    William Wordsworth (1770-- 1850)

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-- 1834)

    George Gordon Byron (1788--1824)

    Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-- 1822)

    John Keats (1795--1821)

Prose

    Charles Lamb (1775--1834)

    Thomas de Quincey (1785--1859)

    William Hazlitt (1778--1830)

    Robert Southey (1774--1843)

    Leigh Hunt (1784--1859)

    John Gibson Lockhart (1794--1854)

Novel

    Walter Scott (1771--1832)

    Jane Austen (1775--1817)

    Minor Novelists

Chapter six Victorian Literature (1837-- 1901)

 Poetry

    Alfred Tennyson (1809-- 1892)

    Robert Browning (1812-- 1889)

    Other Poets

 Prose

    Thomas Carlyle (1795--1881)

    Thomas Macaulay (1800-- 1859)

    John Ruskin (1819--1900)

    Walter Pater (1839-- 1894)

 Novel

    The Bronte Sisters

    Other Writers

    Charles Dickens (1812--1870)

    William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-- 1863) 

    George Eliot (1819-- 1880)

    Anthony Trollope (1815--1882)

    George Meredith (1828-- 1909)

    Thomas Hardy (1840-- 1928)

 Literature of the firrde-siecle

Chapter Seven First Half of the 20th Century

 Background

 Poetry

    Georgian Poetry and War Poetry

    Modernist Poetry

    William Butler Yeats (1865--1939)

    Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-- 1965)

    Poetry of the Thirties and Forties

Drama

    George Bernard Shaw (1856-- 1950)

    Irish Dramatic Renaissance

Novel

    Traditional Novel

    Modernist Novel

    Working Class Novel in the 1930s

    Satirical Fiction

Chapter Eight Second Half of the 20th Century

Drama

    Harold Pinter (1930-- )

    John Osborne (1929--1994)

    Arnold Wesker (1932-- )

    Joe Orton (1933--1967)

    Other Dramatists

 Poetry

    Philip Larkin (1922--1985)

    Ted Hughes (1930--1999)

    Geoffrey Hill (1932-- )

    Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913--2000)

    Seamus Heaney (1939-- )

    Other Poets

 Novel

    The Angry Young Men

    Other Novelists

    Campus Novel

    Historical Novel

    Regional Novel

    Other Recent Novelists

Chronology

References