This collection of articles reprinted from the "London Times Literary Supplement" indicates the flexibility of English as a common literary language in its widespread use outside the United States and England. Major articles present the thesis that English provides an artistic medium which is enriched through colloquial idioms in the West Indies and West Africa, through the imaginative works of the white South Africans, and through the more formal writings of India and Japan. To exemplify this premise, poetry from Pakistan, Ghana, India, England, Nigeria, and Malaya is included. Briefer articles discuss regional color in the English novel (as in novels by Kipling and Forster); writers in English, such as Conrad and Nabokov, whose native language is not English; Commonwealth and Eastern European publishing industries; and the scholarly use of English in Scandnavia and the Low Countries. (JM)