《美国文学选读》是根据国家教委教材编写计划而编写的教科书。全书共分两册：上册从17世纪至第一次世界大战前；下册从第一次世界大战迄今。它的对象是大专院校英文系本科高年级学生和社会上有相当英语基础的美国文学爱好者。

本书在编选作家及作品的过程中一直恪守重点突出的原则。每位作家项下都有作者介绍、作品介绍、原文和注释4部分。作者介绍力求简短明了；作品介绍力求画龙点睛；原文的选择力求有代表性；注释力求深入浅出。所附评语尽量利用国内外评论界数十年来的研究成果，尤其重视介绍美国文学评论界近些年来的研究状况，但决不断章取义，不拘一人之见，不守一家之说。对所选作品采取谨慎的态度，以它对当代及后世的影响作为衡量准则。

本书是根据国家教育部(原国家教委)教材编写计划而精心打造的高等院校文科教材，历经廿余年常销不衰，广受欢迎并频获奖誉；现为南开英美文学精品教材分册之一。全书精选美国文学史上著名作家的经典名篇共72部(节选)，配以作家简介、作品简析和词语难点注释，是大专院校英语系高年级本科生及研究生的必备课本，也是南开版十一五规划教材《美国文学简史》的最佳配套读物。

上册共有选篇24部，时期为17世纪至第一次世界大战前；下册共有选篇48部，时期为第一次世界大战至今。作者介绍简明扼要、作品介绍画龙点睛、词语注释深入浅出；原文的选择力求有代表性，以其对同时代及后世的影响为衡量标准；所附评语充分吸收当代国内外评论界的新观点、新方法，反映了学术研究的最新成果。

前言

Jonathan Edwards

Personal Narrative

Benjamin Franklin

from The Autobiography

Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

from Letters from an American Farmer

Philip Freneau

The Wild Honey Suckle

The Indian Burying Ground

Washington Irving

from The Author's Account of Himself

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

James Fenimore Cooper

from The Pioneers

Ralph Waldo Emerson

from Nature

from The American Scholar

Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven

The Fall of the House of Usher

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Psalm of Life

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

The Slave's Dream

Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, or Life in the Woods

Nathaniel Hawthorne

from The Scarlet Letter

Herman Melville

from Moby-Dick

Wart Whitman

from Song of Myself

I Hear America Singing

I Sit and Look out

O Captain, My Captain

Emily Dickinson

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

I Heard a Fly Buzz--When I Died

My Life Closed Twice before Its Close

As Imperceptibly as Grief

Mine--by the Right of the White Election

Wild Nights--Wild Nights

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

Apparently with No Surprise

I Died for Beauty---but Was Scarce

Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant

I Like to See It Lap the Miles

The Brain--Is Wider than the Sky

Harriet Beecher Stowe

from Uncle Tom's Cabin

William Dean Howells

from The Rise of Silas Lapham

Mark Twain

from The Gilded Age

from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Henry James

The Art of Fiction

from The Ambassadors

Bret Harte

Tennessee's Partner

Hamlin Garland

Mrs. Ripley's Trip

Stephen Crane

from The Red Badge of Courage

Frank Norris

from The Octopus

Theodore Dreiser

from Sister Carrie

Jack London

from Martin Eden

The Law of Life