With 274 authors, the Eighth Edition deepens its representation of essential works in all genres, ranging from Seamas Heaney's award-winning translation of Beowulf, Milton's Paradise Lost, and More's Utopia to the great poets and prose writers of the nineteenth century—Blake and Austen, Wordsworth and Byron, Tennyson and Barrett Browning—to twentieth-century classics of a truly global English literature—Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and Friel's Translations, to name but a few. Color plates—over 75 in all—and thematic clusters of brief and historically significant texts bring to life the cultural concerns of each period. Concise glosses and annotations, period introductions, biographical headnotes, timelines, and selected bibliographies help readers understand and enjoy the rich diversity of English literature.

本书是作者最重要的代表作，酝酿二十年，三易其稿。正如作者自己所说“我为它而活着，并为写它推迟了我的死亡”。小说诗意地叙述了一个在废纸回收站工作三十五年的打包工汉嘉，他把珍贵的图书从废纸堆中捡出来，藏在家里，抱在胸口。他狂饮啤酒，“嘬糖果似的嘬着”那些“美丽的词句”。这是一个忧伤的故事，爱情的忧伤，文化的忧伤。汉嘉最终将自己打进了废纸包，他乘着那些书籍飞升天堂。