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The Common Reader
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The Common Reader

essays by Woolf
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Article History

The Common Reader, collection of essays by Virginia Woolf, published in two series, the first in 1925 and the second in 1932. Most of the essays appeared originally in such publications as the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Athenæum, New Statesman, Life and Letters, Dial, Vogue, and The Yale Review. The title indicates Woolf’s intention that her essays be read by the “common reader” who reads books for personal enjoyment.

Using the sympathetic persona of “the common reader,” Woolf treats literary topics. Woolf outlines her literary philosophy in the introductory essay to the first series, “The Common Reader,” and in the concluding essay to the second series, “How Should One Read a Book?” The first series includes essays on Geoffrey Chaucer, Michel de Montaigne, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Joseph Conrad, as well as discussions of the Greek language and the modern essay. The second series features essays on John Donne, Daniel Defoe, Dorothy Osborne, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Hardy, among others.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.