本书分上、下两册，由7个部分组成，共44单元。每一部分首先介绍了学习要点和背景知识，然后是分单元讲解的作家作品。学习要点由关键词组成，放在各部分前面，明确教学目标，提示学习重点，在正文中出现时都以黑体标记。这也有利于在学习中加深印象，以及对相关参考书目的选择。背景知识主要介绍与作家作品相关的文学思潮，及其生成的社会、历史、文化背景，以及不同文学体裁的转换原因和新特点，还有对代表性作家作品的概述。

每一单元(1—3单位除外)以作家为标题，主要内容是作家介绍与作品选读，以及注释、评论要点、问题思考、课堂活动和作家名言等。

本书是供高等学校英语专业学生使用的英国文学教材，涵盖了从Anglo-Saxon时期到20世纪的主要作家作品。全书分上、下两册，共44个单元，可供一个学年使用。本书具有以下特点：

在介绍作家和文学作品的同时，巧妙地融合了文学史的内容，体系更完整。

将文学批评方法和理论热点融入到每一单元，帮助学生提高文学欣赏和文学批评水平。

每单元设有课后问答题，便于学生更好地理解内容，也有助于学生准备英语专业研究生入学考试。

每单元后的课堂活动可激发学生的学习积极性，活跃课堂气氛。

Part V The Age of Romanticism

(1789-1832)

Unit 22 William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

The Solitary Reaper

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Unit 23 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Kubla Khan or A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Unit 24 George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Don Juan

She Walks in Beauty .

Unit 25 Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Ode to the West Wind

To a Skylark

Unit 26 John Keats (1795-1821)

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Ode to a Nightingale

Unit 27 Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

Ivanhoe

Chapter 20

Chapter 28

Unit 28 Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 1

Chapter II

Unit 29 Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

Dream-Children; A Reverie

Old China

Part VI The Victorian Age (1837-1901)

Unit 30 Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Great Expectations

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

A Tale of Two Cities

Chapter 1 The Period

Unit 31 The Bronte Sisters

Charlotte Brontie (1816-1855)

Jane Eyre

Chapter 23

Emily Bronte (1818-1848)

Wuthering Heights

Chapter IX

Unit 32 Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

Break, Break, Break

Ulysses

Crossing the Bar

Unit 33 The Brownings

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

My Last Duchess

Home Thoughts from Abroad

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Sonnets from the Portuguese

Unit 34 The Victorian Essayists

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

The Hero as Poet

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Sesame and Lilies

Unit 35 Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Unit 36 Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Preface

Chapter II

Unit 37 George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Major Barbara

Act III

Part VII The Twentieth Century

(1901-2000)

Unit 38 William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

When You Are Old

Easter, 1916

The Second Coming

Sailing to Byzantium

Unit 39 Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

The Waste Land

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Unit 40 James Joyce (1882-1941)

Araby

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Chapter 4, Section 3

Unit 41 Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

The Mark on the Wall

Unit 42 David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)

Sons and Lovers

Chapter 9 Defeat of Miriam

Unit 43 Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

Waiting for Godot

Act I

Unit 44 William Golding (1911-1993)

Lord of the Flies

Chapter 9 A View to a Death

Bibliography