The Common Reader is a collection of Virginia Woolf's essays on literature and reading, published in 1925. She discusses writers such as Chaucer, Montaigne, Defoe, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Joseph Conrad, as well as modern fiction. It is worth listening to for its accessible, personal tone that encourages a love of reading.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
THE COMMON READER BY VIRGINIA A WOOLF ". . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claim to poetical honors." DR. JOHNSON, Life of Gray. New York HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. TO LYTTON STRACHEY
Some of these papers appeared originally in the Times Literary Supplement and the Dial. I have to thank the Editors for allowing me to reprint them here; some are based upon articles written for various newspapers, while others appear now for the first time. CONTENTS The Common Reader The Pastons and Chaucer On Not Knowing Greek The Elizabethan Lumber Room Notes on an Elizabethan Play Montaigne The Duchess of Newcastle Rambling Round Evelyn Defoe Addison The Lives of the Obscure I. The Taylors and the Edgeworths II. Laetitia Pilkington III. Miss Ormerod Jane Austen Modern Fiction "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" George Eliot
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