本书在第四版的基础上修订。本次修订主要调整了一些篇目，使经典作品更加突出；重写部分单元的介绍，使全书风格更加统一；整体篇幅稍有压缩，使本书作为教材更加精简实用，从而进一步贴近英美文学课程教学需要，以语言交际和应用为主要内容，真正培养学生语言应用能力。
本书遴选内容多是大学生熟悉的英美文学作品，注重经典性的同时，注重语言的规范和时代感。内容上以切近年轻人关注的话题为主，所选文章力求做到语言精美，内容引人入胜。同时注重课程思政内容的融入，润物细无声地培养学生的民族自豪感和文化自信。

刁克利，博士、教授、博士生导师，中国人民大学外国语学院原副院长。主要研究方向为文学理论、作家研究和文学翻译，出版专著《西方作家理论研究》、《诗性的拯救：作家理论与作家评论》和《诗性的对话：美国当代作家访谈与写作环境分析》等，编著《英美文学欣赏》、《英国文学经典选读》和《翻译学研究方法导论》等，译著《成为作家》和《哈克贝利？芬历险记》等。

I An Appreciation of English Literature
Unit 1 William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet (ActⅡ, SceneⅡ)
Sonnet 18
Unit 2 English Essayists ( Ⅰ )
Francis Bacon
Of Studies
Of Marriage and Single Life
Samuel Johnson
Letter to Lord Chesterfi eld
Unit 3 English Poets
Robert Burns
Auld Lang Syne
A Red, Red Rose
William Wordsworth
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Percy Bysshe Shelley
To—
Alfred Tennyson
The Eagle
Break, Break, Break
Unit 4 Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice (Chapter Ⅰ, Ⅱ, )
Unit 5 Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities (Chapter Ⅰ, ⅩⅤ)
Unit 6 Charlotte Bront?
Jane Eyre (Chapter ⅩⅩⅩⅦ)
Unit 7 David Herbert Lawrence
Sons and Lovers (Chapter Ⅸ)
Unit 8 William Somerset Maugham
Of Human Bondage (Chapter Ⅺ, )
Unit 9 English Essayists ( Ⅱ )
Bertrand Russell
What I Have Lived For
How to Grow Old
Edward Morgan Forster
My Wood
Unit 10 James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Chapter Ⅳ)
II An Appreciation of American Literature
Unit 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature (Introduction, ChapterⅠ)
Unit 2 Herman Melville
Moby-Dick (Chapter 41)
Unit 3 Walt Whitman
There Was a Child Went Forth
Song of Myself (1, 10)
I Sit and Look Out
I Am Nobody! Who Are You?
You Cannot Put a Fire Out—
The Brain — Is Wider than the Sky—
The Soul Selects Her Own Society—
Because I Could Not Stop for Death—
Unit 5 Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Chapter Ⅱ)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Chapter ⅩⅩⅪ)
Unit 6 Henry James
The Portrait of a Lady (Chapter Ⅱ)
Unit 7 O. Henry
The Gift of the Magi
The Cop and the Anthem
Unit 8 Robert Frost
Into My Own
The Road Not Taken
Fire and Ice
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
A Minor Bird
Unit 9 F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby ( Chapter Ⅲ)
Unit 10 Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea (Excerpt)
Bibliography