"The Common Reader" is a collection of classic essays by Virginia Woolf, originally published in two parts in 1925 and 1935. As the title suggests, the essays are intended for the average reader and deal with a variety of literary topics presented in layman's terms. In the second...
Here, in twenty-six essays, Woolf writes of English literature in its various forms, including the poetry of Donne; the novels of Defoe, Sterne, Meredith, and Hardy; Lord Chesterfield's letters and De Quincey's autobiography. She writes, too, about the life and art of women...