本书是作者从英国文学作品中选编的一套适合我国具有较高英语水平的人阅读使用的书籍。尽可能遴选了文学史上的重要作家和重要作品。选文具有代表性，是广大英语爱好者及具有一定程度的英语自学者和英美文学爱好者进修的理想读物。

John Galsworthy

 The Man of Property (excerpt from Part II, Chapter 10)

George Bernard Shaw

 Mrs. Warren's Profession (excerpts from Acts II & III)

William Butler Yeats

 The Lake Isle of Innisfrce

Robert Trcsscll

 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (excerpt from Chapter 2)

Robert Bridges

 London Snow

John Masefield

 Sea-Fever

Walter de la Mare

 The Listeners

Thomas Stearns Eliot

 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

 Portrait of a Lady

 The Hippopotamus

David Herbert Lawrence

 Sons and Lovers (excerpts from Chapter X)

Virginia Woolf

 Mrs. Dalloway (an excerpt)

James Joyce

 Ulysses (excerpt from Chaptor 2)

Lewis Jones

 Cwmardy

Chapter V The Explosion

Chapter XII Soldiers Are Sent to the Valley

Ralph Fox

 The Novel and the People

Chapter 5 The Novel as Epic

Chapter 6 The Victorian Retreat

Chapter 7 The Prometheans

Chapter 9 Socialist Realism

Wysten Hugh Auden

 In Memory of W. B. Yeats

Christopher Caudwell

 Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry

Chapter IV English Poets

Scan O'Casey

 Drums under the Windows

Prometheus Hibernica

Appendix Ⅰ Biographical Sketches

Appendix Ⅱ A List of Books from Which the Texts in This Anthology Are Taken