本书在广泛参考国内外现有的同类读本后精选出27位重要美国作家的作品篇章，涉及小说、诗歌、戏剧、散文等各种文学样式，涵盖了近200年来美国文学的发展历史。《选读》除美国文学原著外附作家、作品、时代介绍，以及相关注解、思考题、解读举例、简评等内容，以方便学生学习，开拓学生思路，是一本选材精当、编排新颖的美国文学教材。

本书适合大学英语专业学生学习美国文学课程以及报考研究生复习之用。为了给读者提供一个较为清晰的美国文学发展轮廓，并凸显出其中的亮点，该选读包括了三个附录：美国文学大事记、获普利策奖的作家名单、获诺贝尔文学奖的美国作家名单。

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804--1864)

Young Goodman Brown

Edgar Allan Poe (1809--1849)

The Raven

Henry David Thoreau (1817--1862)

From Walden

Walt Whitman (1819--1892)

Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Had I the Choice

O Captain! My Captain[

By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

A Noiseless Patient Spider

From Song of Myself

Emily Dickinson (1830--1886)

This is my letter to the World

I heard a Fly buzz--when I died

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee

Because I could not stop for Death

There is no Frigate like a Book

Success is counted sweetest

Much Madness is divinest sense

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

The Lightning is a yellow Fork

I taste a liquor never brewed

Mark Twain (1835--1910)

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Henry James (1843--1916)

The Tree of knowledge

Theodore Dreiser (1871--1945)

From Sister Carrie

Jack London (1876--1916)

The Law of Life

Robert Frost (1874--1963)

Mending Wall

Birches

After Apple-Picking

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The Oven Bird

Design

The Road Not Taken

Acquainted with the Night

Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same

Willa Cather (1873--1947)

From My Antonia

Eugene O' Neill (1888--1953)

Bound East for Cardiff

William Carlos Williams (1883--1963)

Tract

The Red Wheelbarrow

Spring and All

Portrait of a Lady

Love Song

Danse Russe

Queen-Anne' s Lace

This is just to say

Willow Poem

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896--1940)

From The Great Gatsby

William Faulkner (1897--1962)

Barn Burning

Ernest Hemingway (1899--1961)

Hills Like White Elephants

John Steinbeck (1902--1968)

The Chrysanthemums

Tennessee Williams (1911--1983)

From The Glass Menagerie

Arthur Miller (1915--2005)

From Death of a Salesman

Saul Bellow (1915--2005)

From Seize the Day

Edward AIbee (1928--)

The Sandbox

Toni Morrison (1931--)

From Sula

Maxine Hong Kingston (1940--)

From The Woman Warrior : Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Appendices

Chronology of Significant Events in the History of American Literature

Pulitzer Prize Winners

American Winners of Nobel Prize in Literature

References