本书选收的早期和现代的作家作品都是英国文学史上早有定论的优秀作家作品。对于当代作家尚难有定论，选择的依据主要是文坛上声誉较高的。书中还简要介绍短篇小说的要素和阅读方法，课后问题引导学生从多种角度解读小说文本，而且每个单元依次包括作家介绍，正文和注释，思考问题共三个部分。本书可供高校英语专业学生的阅读学习。

Introduction

Section One Early

Charles Dickens      The Signal-Man

George Eliot       The Lifted Veil

Rudyard Kipling      The Man who would be King

Thomas Hardy      The Son's Veto

                The Three Strangers

Joseph Conrad       The Secret Sharer

Section Two Modern

James Joyce       Araby

                The Dead

D. H. Lawrence      Rocking-Horse Winner

                The Horse Dealer's Daughter

Katherine Mansfield    The Garden-Party

Virginia Woolf       Kew Gardens

                The Mark on the Wall

Robert Louis Stevenson   Markheim

W. Somerset Maugham   The Outstation

H. G. Wells        The Door in the Wall

Section Three Contemporary

Said           The Open Window

              The Interlopers

Doris Lessing       To Room Nineteen

Elizabeth Bowen      The Demon Lover

Graham Greene      The Destructors

Bibliography