《爱语学堂·中外文学名篇选读系列：20世纪英美文学作品精选与导读（上册·散文篇）》全部作品均系20世纪著名作家的20篇散文佳作，题材涉及文化、人生、读书、自然、教育、家庭等多个方面。每个话题包含2篇文章，篇幅短小、题材广泛、真实自然、情文并茂；原文后附有思考题、讨论习题，能够启发和引导学生创造性地解读文本，也有助于课堂上实施探究式、讨论式、参与式教学方法。

　　《爱语学堂·中外文学名篇选读系列：20世纪英美文学作品精选与导读（上册·散文篇）》适应英语专业一、二年级学生和理工科专业本科生和研究生的文学爱好者课程教学或课外阅读使用，是阅读者初步学会欣赏名家名篇的适宜读本，可为衔接短篇小说阅读奠定基础。

Youth
University Days
How Should One Read a Book
Outside Literature
Late Summer
A Word for Autumn
The Windmill
Niagara Falls
Advice to Writers
Why a Classic is a Classic
On Laziness
Going Out for a Walk
Free!
What I Think and Feel at 25
On the Difference between Wit and Humor
What is Wrong with Our System of Education?
The Libido for the Ugly
The Crooked Streets
The Pleasures of Ignorance
What Life Means to Me
Supplementary Reading
Peace in the Atomic Age
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
The Great Arsenal of Democracy
Appendix： Rhetorical Terms
References

　　Here， inRobinson Crusoe， we are trudging a plain high road； one thing happens afteranother； the fact and the order of the fact is enough. But if the open air and adventuremean everything to Defoe they mean nothing to Jane Austen. Here is thedrawing-room， and people talking， and by the many mirrors of their talk revealingtheir characters. And if， when we have accustomed ourselves to the drawing-roomand its reflections， we turn to Hardy， we are once more spun around. The moors areround us and the stars are above our heads. The other side of the mind is nowexposed-the dark side that comes uppermost in solitude， not the light side thatshows in company. Our relations are not towards people， but towards Nature anddestiny. Yet different as these worlds are， each is consistent with itself. The maker ofeach is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective and however great a strainthey may put upon us they will never confuse us， as lesser writers so frequently do，by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book. Thus to go from onegreat novelist to another-from Jane Austen to Hardy， from Peacock to Trollope，from Scott to Meredith-is to be wrenched and uprooted； to be thrown this wayand then that. To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable notonly of great finesse of perception， but of great boldness of imagination if you aregoing to make use of all that the novelist-the great mist-gives you.