本书旨在为全国英语专业的本科生和研究生提供一个全面体验英美文学独特魅力的系统阅读机会。
全书共分33个单元，内容可满足大学英语专业两个学期的课程需求。考虑到英语专业本科生或研究生课程的特点，我们在每个单元中均提供了术语解释、作家介绍、作品概要、原著选读、难词注释、作品评述、课堂讨论题、推荐书目等内容。
在选篇过程中，也着力保持了每一单元作品的相对完整性，以真实地反映作家的创作特色和思想内涵。

王继辉，北京大学英语系教授，博士生导师。美国普渡大学博士，美国哈佛大学高级访问学者，英国埃克斯特大学荣誉教授，香港中文大学（深圳校区）人文学院特邀专家，博雅翻译文化沙龙理事会主席。研究领域包括中世纪英国文学、历史语言学、西方版本目录学、翻译教育。

Part I ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 1 Beowulf
Beowulf（Excerpts from the translation by Donaldson）
Unit 2 Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales（Excerpts from the "General Prologue"）
Unit 3 William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Othello,the Moor of Venice（Act V,Scene ii）
Unit 4 John Milton
Paradise Lost（Excerpts from Book IX）
Unit 5 Jonathan Swift
A Modest Proposal
Unit 6 Samuel Johnson
A Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Chesterfield
A Preface to the Dictionary（Selections）
Unit 7 William Blake
Poems from The Songs of Innocence
Holy Thursday
The Lamb
The Chimney Sweeper
Poems from The Songs of Experience
Holy Thursday
The Tyger
London
Unit 8 William Wordsworth
Poems from Lyrical Ballads with a Few Other Poems
To My Sister
Expostulation and Reply
The Tables Turned
The Sofitary Reaper
Unit 9 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Unit 10 JaneAusten
Pride and Prejudice（Chapters I and II）
Unit 11 Charles Dickens
David Copperfield（An excerpt from Chapter XXIX）
Unit 12 Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights（Chapter XV）
Unit 13 Thomas Hardy
Tess of the d'Urbervilles（Chapters LV and LVI;Chapter LVIII）
Unit 14 William Butler Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
To a Child Dancing in the Wind
To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing
A Prayer for Old Age
Unit 15 James A.A.Joyce
The Boarding House
Unit 16 D.H.Lawrence
Sons and Lovers(An excerpt from Chapter VIII）
Unit 17 George Bernard Shaw
Saint Joan（An excerpt from Scene VI）
Part II AMERICAN LITERATURE
Unit 1 Washington Irving
Rip Van Winkle（Excerpts）
Unit 2 David Henry Thoreau
Solitude（Excerpts）
Unit 3 Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven
Unit 4 Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown
Unit 5 Herman Melville
The Mast-Head
Unit 6 Walt Whitman
One's-Self I Sing
0 Captain! My Captain!
Song of Myseff
Unit 7 Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Success
I Died for Beauty
Unit 8 Jack London
Love of Life
Unit 9 Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn（Chapter XXXI）
Unit 10 Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie（Excerpts from Chapter XLVII）
Unit 11 F.Scott Fitzgerald
The Long Way Out
Unit 12 William Faulkner
A Rose for Emily
Unit 13 Ernest Hemingway
Soldier's Home
Unit 14 Twentieth Century American Poets
Robert Lee Frost
The Road Not Taken
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Ezra Pound
In a Station of the Metro
A Pact
Salutation
The Garden
Langston Hughes
Dreams
A Dream Deferred
Dream Variations
The Negro Speaks of River
Allen Ginsberg
America
Unit 15 Arthur Miller
The Death of a Salesman（Excerpts from Act II）
Unit 16 Joseph Heller
Catch-22（Chapter I）