本书由26篇专论组成，采用多样的手法从不同的视角勾勒了英国诗歌的历史进程，涵盖了从有文字可考的古英语诗歌到20世纪英国诗歌的主要历史发展阶段，讨论了植根于英格兰、威尔士、苏格兰以及爱尔兰土壤的英国诗歌。它不仅介绍了那些在文学史上产生过重大影响的英国诗人及其作品，而且还涉及了许多名不见经传的歌谣诗人以及长期被忽略的女诗人，由此多层次、多侧面地展示了英国诗歌的全貌，适合广大英国诗歌研究者和爱好者参考阅读。

Introduction
Old English Poetry
Middle English Poetry
Chaucer
Poetry in Scots: Barbour to Burns
From Ballads to Betjeman
Printing and Distribution of Poetry
Varieties of Sixteenth-Century Narrative Poetry
Sixteenth-Century Lyric Poetry
Spenser, Sidney, Jonson
Lyric Poetry from Donne to Philips
Miltion
Dryden and Pope
Poetry in the Eighteenth Century
Blake
Coleridge
Poetry, 1785-1832
Byron, Shelley, and Keats
Wordsworthe and Tennyson
The Victorian Era
Victorian Religious Poetry
Pre-Raphaelite Poetry
The 1890s
1898-1945: Hardy to Auden
Yeats, Lawrence, Eliot
Poetry in England, 1945-1990
Poetry in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, 1930-1990
Brief Biographies of the Poets
Editions
Notes on Contributors
Index