THE
COMMON READER
BY
VIRGINIA A WOOLF
". . . I rejoice to concur with the commonreader; for by the common sense of readers,uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all therefinements of subtlety and the dogmatism oflearning, must be generally decided all claim topoetical 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 LiterarySupplement and the Dial. I have to thank the Editors forallowing me to reprint them here; some are based upon articles written forvarious 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
The Russian Point of View
Outlines—
I. Miss Mitford
II. Dr. Bentley
III. Lady Dorothy Nevill
IV. Archbishop Thomson
The Patron and the Crocus
The Modern Essay
Joseph Conrad
How It Strikes a Contemporary
THE COMMON READER
The Common Reader
There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson's Life of Gray which might well bewritten up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yetfull of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by privatepeople. ". . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by thecommon sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after allthe refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must befinally decided all