美国文学是世界文学的重要组成部分。它对英国文学既有继承，又有创新。初期的美国文学曾有明显的模仿英国文学的迹象，但从19世纪中期开始，美国文学便异军突起，屹立于世界文学之林。它具有浓厚的民族气息和自己独特的风格，宛如世界文学园圃的一朵奇葩，散发出沁人心脾的幽香，近年来，我国对美国文学的介绍和研究日益重视，不少大专院校已开设美国文学课程。
《美国文学选读》是根据国家教委教材编写计划而编写的教科书。全书共分两册：上册从17世纪至第一次世界大战前；下册从第一次世界大战迄今。它的对象是大专院校英文系本科高年级学生和社会上有相当英语基础的美国文学爱好者。
本书在编选作家及作品的过程中一直恪守重点突出的原则。每位作家项下都有作者介绍、作品介绍、原文和注释4部分。作者介绍力求简短明了；作品介绍力求画龙点睛；原文的选择力求有代表性；注释力求深入浅出。所附评语尽量利用国内外评论界数十年来的研究成果，尤其重视介绍美国文学评论界近些年来的研究状况，但决不断章取义，不拘一人之见，不守一家之说。对所选作品采取谨慎的态度，以它对当代及后世的影响作为衡量准则。

再版前言
Jonathan Edwards。
Personal Narrative
Benjamin Franklin
from The Autobiography
Hector St.John de Crevecoeur
from Letters from an American FaTruer
Philip Freneau
The Wild Honey Suckle
The Indian Burying Ground
Washington Irving
from The Author’s Account of Himself
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
James Fenimore Cooper
from The Pioneer8
Ralph Waldo Emerson
from?Cature
from The American Scholar
Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven
The Fall of the House of Usher
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A psalm of Life
The Tide RIses, the Tide Falls
The Slave's Dream
Henry David Thoreau
form Walden
Nathaniel Hawthorne
from The Scarlet Letter
Herman MelviUeQ1
from Moby—Dick
Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself
I Hear America Singing
I Sit and Look out
O Captain．My Captain
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
I Heard a Fly BuzzWhen I Died
Mv Life Closed Twice before Its Close
As Imperceptibly as Grief
Mine-by the Right of the White Election
Wild NightsWild Nights
A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
Apparently with No Surprise
I Died for Beautybut Was Scarce
Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant
I Like to See It Lap the Miles
The Brain-Is Wider than the Sky
Harriet Beecher Stowe
from Uncle Tom’S Cabin
William Dean Howells
from The Rise of Silas Lapham
Mark Twain
from The Gilded Age
from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Henry James
The Art of Fiction
from The Ambassadors
Bret Harte
Tennessee’s Partner
Hamlin Gafland
……
Stephen Carne
Frank Norris
Theodore Dreiser
Jack London