Upon the publication of this collection of essays by Professor Qian Jiaoru over years of a variety of English teaching, translating and research experiences, I would like to express my heart-felt congratulations to him in the form of this preface, which I have the pleasure of writing at his request. Honestly, when he first asked me if I could do him this favor, I was a little hesitant because I had just arrived at Shihezi University in Xinjiang as a visiting professor with new people to meet and new things to attend to. But after reading the first few essays he sent me, I felt sure they were going to make a good collection worthy of strong recommendation not only to students of English language and literature but to scholars in this field as well.

Preface

Author's Foreword

1 Literature

 Anglo-American Literature

 The Novel as Reflection of Society under Threat

 Classes and Class Conflict as Seen in Shirley and North and South

 Human Frailty and Tragic Destiny

 Literature and Society

 A Long Night's Journey that Tries but Fails to Get Beyond the Horizon

 Australian Literature

 A Reading of Shaw Neilson's Poem "The Orange Tree"

 Complexities of Human Nature in Australian Fictional Characters

 Poetry Based on the Experience of Music

 The Affirmation of Life in Martin Boyd's Lucinda Brayford

 Confusion and Conflict in Frank Moorhouse's Discontinuous Narrative The Americans, Baby

2 Linguistics and Stylistics

 A Prosodic Analysis of "Chinese Accent" in Spoken English

 A Critique of Seymour Chatman's "Milton's Participial Style"

 Superficiality, Spirituality, Superciliousness and Sensuality

 The Language of e. e. cummings' Poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town"

 Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature to EFL Learners in China

3 Miscellaneous Writings

 Some Aspects of Jiajiao (Private Tuition) in China Today

 Translation at UNESCO