The Common Reader Volume 1

26 Essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Conrad, Montaigne and Others

By: Virginia Woolf

Narrated by: Joan Walker

This is Virginia Woolf’s first collection of essays, published in 1925. In them, she attempts to see literature from the point of view of the ‘common reader’ - someone whom she, with Dr Johnson, distinguished from the critic and the scholar. She read, and wrote, as an outsider: a woman set to school in her father’s library, denied the educational privileges of her male siblings - and with no fixed view of what constitutes ‘English literature’. What she produced is an eccentric and unofficial literary and social history from the 14th to the 20th centuries, with an excursion to ancient Greece thrown in.

She investigates medieval England (The Paston Letters and Chaucer), tsarist Russia (The Russian Point of View), Elizabethan Playwrights, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, Modern Fiction and the Modern Essay. When she published this book Woolf’s fame as a novelist was already established: now she was hailed as a brilliant interpretative critic. Here, she addresses ‘the common reader’ in the remarkable prose and with all the imagination and gaiety that are the stamps of her genius.

©1925 Virginia Woolf Estate (P)2020 Ukemi Productions Ltd

Impressive. Virginia Woolf was a generous. Her stream of conciousness kind of writting is unmatched.

I have nothing much to say. She is a genius. Am moving to Collection part two now.

Wonderful Listen

This volume contains some of Woolf's most important and influential essays: "Modern Fiction", "Jane Austen", "George Eliot", "Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights." The narrator's voice suits Woolf's writing style down to a T, so it is great to see Woolf's non-fiction making its way into the audiobook domain.

Appreciations with little to back them up

Before the days of real criticism, reviewers would often simply say that a book was good and gush about this or that. There were no concrete examples or biographical background or references to influences and other reviews. That's what I found in this so-called common reader. The title suggests that it was written for the unscholarly reader who just enjoys reading. I found the prose crabbed and convoluted and almost unreadable, so I'm not sure who this common reader is. Most of these essays are dated and not worth reading today. Her opinions are contrary to popular opinion, which is not necessarily bad except when there is an army of professors and intellectuals who are against you. I got tricked into reading this by the lectures of David Thorburn, whom is now on my avoid list. This woman obviously had a great mind -- I love 'A Room of One's Own' -- but she also was incredibly repressed and unable to overcome her mental problems. Why she remains in the Western canon at this point is beyond me.