高继海编著的《简明英国文学史（修订本）（英文版）》按时间顺序介绍了英国文学发展脉络、流派和主要作家及其作品，突出文学研究的评介性，培养学习者的独立思考意识。本书依厚古薄今的原则，具体内容安排为：16世纪之前为一章，16、17、18世纪各一章、19、20世纪各两章。为方便读者，书末附有年表和参考文献。本书是一部学术价值和阅读性兼具的英国文学教材，适合高等学校英语专业或具有同等水平的学习者使用。

Chapter One Old and Medieval Literature
Old English Literature (450-1066)
Beowulf
Other Poems
Prose
Middle English Literature (1066-1485)
The Gawain Poet
Other Poets
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)
Chapter Two Renaissance and Reformation Literature
Background
Thomas More (1478-1535)
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard
The Earl of Surrey (1518-1547)
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) and Walter Raleigh (1527-1618)
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Early Drama
The University Wits
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Chapter Three The 17th Century
Shakespeare's Successors
Ben Jonson (1573-1637)
Other Playwrights
John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets
John Milton (1608-1674)
Prose
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
The English Bible
Other Prose Writers
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
John Dryden (1631-1700)
Chapter Four The 18th Century
Prose
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
The Rise of the Novel
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
Poetry
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
Late 18th Century Literature
Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774)
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Richard Sheridan (1751-1816)
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
The Gothic Novel
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Chapter Five The Age of Romanticism (1790--1840)
Background
Romantic Poets
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
John Keats (1795-1821)
Prose
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859)
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)
Novel
Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Minor Novelists
Chapter Six Victorian Literature (1837-1901)
Poetry
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Other Poets
Prose
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859)
John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Walter Pater (1839-1894)
Novel
The Bronte Sisters
Other Writers
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
George Eliot (1819-1880)
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
George Meredith (1828-1909)
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Literature of the fin-de-siOcle
Chapter Seven First Half of the 20th Century
Background
Poetry
Georgian Poetry and War Poetry
Modernist Poetry
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
Poetry of the Thirties and Forties
Drama
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Irish Dramatic Renaissance
Novel
Traditional Novel
Modernist Novel
Working Class Novel in the 1930s
Satirical Fiction
Chapter Eight Second Half of the 20th Century
Drama
Harold Pinter (1930- )
John Osborne (1929-1994)
Arnold Wesker (1932- )
Joe Orton (1933-1967)
Other Dramatists
Poetry
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
Ted Hughes (1930-1999)
Geoffrey Hill (1932- )
Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000)
Seamus Heaney (1939- )
Other Poets
Novel
The Angry Young Men
Other Novelists
Campus Novel
Historical Novel
Regional Novel
Other Recent Novelists
Chronology
References