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The Common Reader - First Series
"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. The first series deals with various authors including Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, and Joseph Conrad, together with pieces on the Greek language and the modern essay. A fantastic collection of essays not to be missed by fans of Woolf's seminal work and literature lovers in general. 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", etc. Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English writer. She is widely hailed as being among the most influential modernist authors of the 20th century and a pioneer of stream of consciousness narration. She suffered numerous nervous breakdowns during her life primarily as a result of the deaths of family members, and it is now believed that she may have suffered from bipolar disorder. In 1941, Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse at Lewes, aged 59. Other notable works by this author "Pattledom" (1925), "A Room of One's Own" (1929), "The Captain's Death and Other Essays" (1950). Read & Co. Great Essays is proudly republishing this classic collection now in a new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1925
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8694 people want to read
About the author
Virginia Woolf
1,908 books28.1k followers(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 179 reviews
January 31, 2016
It’s appropriate that my 100th GR review should be a book that attempts to shift literary criticism from the hallowed office into the sitting room as all of us here on Goodreads are “the common reader”, a voice that in Woolf’s day barely existed. In the final essay she has a dig at (her) contemporary professional critics. I’m presently reading a novel which according to The New York Times Book Review and The Boston Globe is the work of a rare genius; the truth though is, as any common reader endowed with a functioning critical faculty would no doubt agree, that it’s simply a very ordinary novel with no distinguishing virtue. So can we trust professional critics now any more than we can trust marketing departments to give us an honest assessment of the worth of a book? The answer, of course, is no. To a far greater extent we can trust our fellow readers here.
One of the overriding impressions here is that Woolf is much more generous and kind in her criticism than in her praise. My favourite essays were those on obscure writers of memoirs. None of these clearly had much literary merit and yet with what delight and affection she read them and how brilliantly she brought before our eyes the eccentricities of their authors. These were the ones that made me laugh out loud. That gave me a vivid sense of Virginia Woolf’s conversation at a dinner table. I’ve always imagined Woolf to be like a female Byron in conversation, witty, yes, a bit snotty but also expansive and ultimately self-effacing. Because of this it has always annoyed me that she is invariably portrayed on screen as some kind of mawkish, gibbering bag-woman as was the case in the recent BBC Bloomsbury drama and in Nicole Kidman’s interpretation of her in the film of The Hours.
On the other hand she tends to be a little mean and begrudging in her praise. She can write about Joyce: “Mr Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be probability, or coherence, or any other of these signposts which for generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when called upon to imagine what he can neither touch or see.” Only to later dismiss Ulysses as a “memorable catastrophe”. Lawrence gets similar treatment. And the chapter on Emily Bronte is probably the most uninspired. It was her belief that Emily Bronte’s poems would outlive her novel. Wuthering Heights however can be found on every list of the greatest novels ever written, something not true of Conrad’s early work which Woolf, unusually, praises without reservations. So even Woolf wasn’t foolproof in her assessments. There’s also a sense of how competitive she is with both contemporaries and other women – a major factor in her friendship with Katherine Mansfield. There’s her famous comment about Middlemarch but then she will help us understand why it’s not as grown up as War and Peace where every relationship is so much more finely tuned and the imaginative reach of Tolstoy excels anything Eliot is capable of. She remarks that Eliot’s heroines talk too much and comments on “the fumbling which shook Eliot’s hand when she had to conceive a fit mate for her heroines.” And I remembered how Dorothea’s relationship with Ladislaw, written perhaps with all critical faculties in abeyance, borders on being the kind of young girl’s wish fulfilment liaison we expect from formulaic romantic fiction.
Above all else, reading this helped me understand the nature of the imperatives behind what Woolf wanted to achieve in her own work.
One of the overriding impressions here is that Woolf is much more generous and kind in her criticism than in her praise. My favourite essays were those on obscure writers of memoirs. None of these clearly had much literary merit and yet with what delight and affection she read them and how brilliantly she brought before our eyes the eccentricities of their authors. These were the ones that made me laugh out loud. That gave me a vivid sense of Virginia Woolf’s conversation at a dinner table. I’ve always imagined Woolf to be like a female Byron in conversation, witty, yes, a bit snotty but also expansive and ultimately self-effacing. Because of this it has always annoyed me that she is invariably portrayed on screen as some kind of mawkish, gibbering bag-woman as was the case in the recent BBC Bloomsbury drama and in Nicole Kidman’s interpretation of her in the film of The Hours.
On the other hand she tends to be a little mean and begrudging in her praise. She can write about Joyce: “Mr Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be probability, or coherence, or any other of these signposts which for generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when called upon to imagine what he can neither touch or see.” Only to later dismiss Ulysses as a “memorable catastrophe”. Lawrence gets similar treatment. And the chapter on Emily Bronte is probably the most uninspired. It was her belief that Emily Bronte’s poems would outlive her novel. Wuthering Heights however can be found on every list of the greatest novels ever written, something not true of Conrad’s early work which Woolf, unusually, praises without reservations. So even Woolf wasn’t foolproof in her assessments. There’s also a sense of how competitive she is with both contemporaries and other women – a major factor in her friendship with Katherine Mansfield. There’s her famous comment about Middlemarch but then she will help us understand why it’s not as grown up as War and Peace where every relationship is so much more finely tuned and the imaginative reach of Tolstoy excels anything Eliot is capable of. She remarks that Eliot’s heroines talk too much and comments on “the fumbling which shook Eliot’s hand when she had to conceive a fit mate for her heroines.” And I remembered how Dorothea’s relationship with Ladislaw, written perhaps with all critical faculties in abeyance, borders on being the kind of young girl’s wish fulfilment liaison we expect from formulaic romantic fiction.
Above all else, reading this helped me understand the nature of the imperatives behind what Woolf wanted to achieve in her own work.
September 14, 2014
The first thing that occurs to you while reading Virginia’s essays is that they are not laced with academic, high brow language and style. In fact, her writing is so accessible that it easily seems to mirror a common reader’s thoughts and expressions. While writing these essays, nearly twenty five of them in this collection, Virginia offers a glimpse into her mind and it becomes clear how she manages to write so lucidly yet so unassumingly. She writes as she knows the reader will enjoy reading. And it goes without saying for both her novels and essays, though if I may add; it is her essays which demonstrate her skill as a writer more effectively.
In this collection, most of the essays are memoirs of people both well known like Chaucer, Jane Austen, Defoe, Montaigne, Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad as well as relatively lesser knowns like Edgeworth, Pilkington, Ms. Mitford, Bentley and a few more.
We also have some well known essays like ‘Modern Fiction’, ‘The Modern Essay’ and ‘How it strikes a Contemporary’ in this beautiful collection.
Woolf’s words, quite naturally, turn from being sincere and open to joyously humorous and sensibly satirical, as and when her thoughts demand, so that there is never a dull moment when we read her. As a matter of fact, her words come out so effortlessly that the essays seem to be written over in single sittings each, perhaps without any editing being ever done.
I am quoting here some of the quotes which I loved in this collection, and I recommend a reading of this volume to the readers who enjoy Woolf’s writing as well as to the aspiring writers who find themselves struggling between the glorious past of literature and the mayhem which seems to be spreading over the present or the future of contemporary writings.
From “The Pastons and Chaucer”:
It is safe to say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another because of anything that Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, we are absorbing morality at every pore.
From “The Elizabethan Lumber Room”:
We carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us.
From “Montaigne”:
For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say. Other people, for instance, long ago made up their minds that old invalidish gentleman ought to stay at home and edify the rest of us by the spectacle of their connubial fidelity. The soul of Montaigne said, on the contrary, that it is in the old age that one ought to travel, and marriage, which rightly, is very seldom founded on love, is apt to become, towards the end of life, a formal tie better broken up.
From “Modern Fiction”:
Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.
Contrary to her troubled mind, her writing is, strangely, quite optimistic towards life.
In this collection, most of the essays are memoirs of people both well known like Chaucer, Jane Austen, Defoe, Montaigne, Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad as well as relatively lesser knowns like Edgeworth, Pilkington, Ms. Mitford, Bentley and a few more.
We also have some well known essays like ‘Modern Fiction’, ‘The Modern Essay’ and ‘How it strikes a Contemporary’ in this beautiful collection.
Woolf’s words, quite naturally, turn from being sincere and open to joyously humorous and sensibly satirical, as and when her thoughts demand, so that there is never a dull moment when we read her. As a matter of fact, her words come out so effortlessly that the essays seem to be written over in single sittings each, perhaps without any editing being ever done.
I am quoting here some of the quotes which I loved in this collection, and I recommend a reading of this volume to the readers who enjoy Woolf’s writing as well as to the aspiring writers who find themselves struggling between the glorious past of literature and the mayhem which seems to be spreading over the present or the future of contemporary writings.
From “The Pastons and Chaucer”:
It is safe to say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another because of anything that Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, we are absorbing morality at every pore.
From “The Elizabethan Lumber Room”:
We carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us.
From “Montaigne”:
For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say. Other people, for instance, long ago made up their minds that old invalidish gentleman ought to stay at home and edify the rest of us by the spectacle of their connubial fidelity. The soul of Montaigne said, on the contrary, that it is in the old age that one ought to travel, and marriage, which rightly, is very seldom founded on love, is apt to become, towards the end of life, a formal tie better broken up.
From “Modern Fiction”:
Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.
Contrary to her troubled mind, her writing is, strangely, quite optimistic towards life.
August 27, 2021
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Throughout the course of my undergraduate degree I consistently and persistently avoided Virginia Woolf’s body of work as on the best of days I have little patience for stream of consciousness (especially of the Joycean variety) and modernist literature. When my lecturers mentioned Woolf they always seemed to confirm my impression of her being a pretentious snob so I didn’t feel particularly inclined to pick up her impenetrably introspective novels.
As of late, I’ve been wanting to read more essays and, for some reason or other, I ended up reading Woolf’s The Common Reader...and I’m glad I did. Yes, her worldview betrays a certain elitism but given her time period I don’t feel particularly slighted by her notion of ‘common reader’ or by the way in which she refers to cultures outside of Britain (once again Italians are referred to as a vaguely uncivilised ‘Southern race’).
Woolf’s essays are far more accessible than I’d imagined them to be. Unlike her fiction, here Woolf’s prose does not stray into the obscure, and needlessly confounding, territories of the English language. Here her lexicon is not only crystal clear but simply captivating. She writes with such eloquence and vitality, demonstrating her extensive knowledge of her subjects without giving herself airs. In fact, these essays never seem to reveal Woolf’s presence as she does not write as an “I” but as a “we”. While in clumsier hands I would have found the “we” to be patronising, Woolf’s essays are anything but. She includes us with ease, making us feel as if we were active participants in her analysis. Her subjects too are not passive figures easily relegated to the past. Her evocative descriptions have an immediacy that makes us momentarily forget that these authors are long-dead. Woolf does not waste time in recounting the entire careers and lives of her biographees. With a few carefully articulated phrases she hones in on the essence of these writers and their work. Woolf whisks away by asking us to ‘imagine’ alongside her these authors in their everyday lives, by speaking of their household, their country, and their world, with such familiarity as to convince us that she knew each one of them.
Her essays certainly demonstrate a wealth of knowledge. Woolf creates a myriad of connections, drawing upon history and philosophy in an engaging and enlightening manner. Certain historical facts went over my head, but that is probably due to my non-British schooling. Nevertheless, even when I wasn’t sure of whom she was writing about or the significance of one of her references, I still felt very much involved by what I was reading.
Woolf’s examination of the interplay between critics, readers, and writers becomes the central leitmotif of this collection. Time and again Woolf interrogates the way in which a writer is influenced by their readers and critics, and of the way in which this knowledge of a future readership shapes their writing. Woolf surveys different types of authors: fiction (such as Daniel Defoe, Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charlotte and Emily Brontë), essayists (such as Montaigne), poets, playwrights, and those historical figures who escape definition (such as the incomparable Margaret Cavendish).
In ‘On not knowing Greek’ and ‘The Russian Point of View’ Woolf turns to language and translation while in ‘Modern Fiction’, ‘The Modern Essay’, ‘How it Strikes a Contemporary’, and ‘How Should One Read a Book’ she considers the many faces of writing and the differences between classic and contemporary fiction/authors.
Even in those instances in which our interpretations differed, I recognised that her arguments were informative and persuasive. It is perhaps Woolf’s dialogic wit that makes her suppositions all the more compelling.
More impressive still is Woolf’s description of one of my least favourite literary styles in her much quoted essay titled ‘Modern Fiction’. Here her authorial presence is more felt as she expresses a wish to read fiction that reflects the continuous and incongruous flow of our thoughts.
I thoroughly recommend this to bibliophiles of all sorts. Whether you consider yourself a common reader or not Woolf’s essays have a lot to offer.
Throughout the course of my undergraduate degree I consistently and persistently avoided Virginia Woolf’s body of work as on the best of days I have little patience for stream of consciousness (especially of the Joycean variety) and modernist literature. When my lecturers mentioned Woolf they always seemed to confirm my impression of her being a pretentious snob so I didn’t feel particularly inclined to pick up her impenetrably introspective novels.
As of late, I’ve been wanting to read more essays and, for some reason or other, I ended up reading Woolf’s The Common Reader...and I’m glad I did. Yes, her worldview betrays a certain elitism but given her time period I don’t feel particularly slighted by her notion of ‘common reader’ or by the way in which she refers to cultures outside of Britain (once again Italians are referred to as a vaguely uncivilised ‘Southern race’).
Woolf’s essays are far more accessible than I’d imagined them to be. Unlike her fiction, here Woolf’s prose does not stray into the obscure, and needlessly confounding, territories of the English language. Here her lexicon is not only crystal clear but simply captivating. She writes with such eloquence and vitality, demonstrating her extensive knowledge of her subjects without giving herself airs. In fact, these essays never seem to reveal Woolf’s presence as she does not write as an “I” but as a “we”. While in clumsier hands I would have found the “we” to be patronising, Woolf’s essays are anything but. She includes us with ease, making us feel as if we were active participants in her analysis. Her subjects too are not passive figures easily relegated to the past. Her evocative descriptions have an immediacy that makes us momentarily forget that these authors are long-dead. Woolf does not waste time in recounting the entire careers and lives of her biographees. With a few carefully articulated phrases she hones in on the essence of these writers and their work. Woolf whisks away by asking us to ‘imagine’ alongside her these authors in their everyday lives, by speaking of their household, their country, and their world, with such familiarity as to convince us that she knew each one of them.
Her essays certainly demonstrate a wealth of knowledge. Woolf creates a myriad of connections, drawing upon history and philosophy in an engaging and enlightening manner. Certain historical facts went over my head, but that is probably due to my non-British schooling. Nevertheless, even when I wasn’t sure of whom she was writing about or the significance of one of her references, I still felt very much involved by what I was reading.
Woolf’s examination of the interplay between critics, readers, and writers becomes the central leitmotif of this collection. Time and again Woolf interrogates the way in which a writer is influenced by their readers and critics, and of the way in which this knowledge of a future readership shapes their writing. Woolf surveys different types of authors: fiction (such as Daniel Defoe, Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charlotte and Emily Brontë), essayists (such as Montaigne), poets, playwrights, and those historical figures who escape definition (such as the incomparable Margaret Cavendish).
In ‘On not knowing Greek’ and ‘The Russian Point of View’ Woolf turns to language and translation while in ‘Modern Fiction’, ‘The Modern Essay’, ‘How it Strikes a Contemporary’, and ‘How Should One Read a Book’ she considers the many faces of writing and the differences between classic and contemporary fiction/authors.
Even in those instances in which our interpretations differed, I recognised that her arguments were informative and persuasive. It is perhaps Woolf’s dialogic wit that makes her suppositions all the more compelling.
More impressive still is Woolf’s description of one of my least favourite literary styles in her much quoted essay titled ‘Modern Fiction’. Here her authorial presence is more felt as she expresses a wish to read fiction that reflects the continuous and incongruous flow of our thoughts.
I thoroughly recommend this to bibliophiles of all sorts. Whether you consider yourself a common reader or not Woolf’s essays have a lot to offer.
January 25, 2022
This is a bit like having Virginia Woolf on Goodreads. It's a collection of essays about the books she reads. Her observations are so imaginatively lively and creatively formulated that it was a joy to read even when I didn't know the authors she was writing about. Many of the books she tackles are obscure memoirs or biographies from distant centuries. One thing that surprised me is how witty and playful she is. She can be kind and generous but has such a perceptively brilliant critical mind. Of most interest to me were her essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Hardy and the Brontes.
April 26, 2022
"Alguna vez soné que cuando llegue el día del Juicio Final, y los grandes conquistadores y jueves y hombres de Estado vayan a recibir su recompensa –sus coronas, sus laureles, sus nombres esculpidos en mármol inmortal-, el Todopoderoso se dirigirá a Pedro y le dirá, no sin incierta envidia cuando nos vea llegar con nuestros libros debajo del brazo: “Mira, estos no necesitan recompensa. No tenemos nada que darles aquí. Han amado la lectura."
Leer a los grandes autores y escritoras que dio la literatura en su otra faceta, la misma que la nuestra, la de lectores, no tiene precio.
Que seres tan gigantes a quienes le debemos nuestra pasión por la literatura se posicionen en el mismo nivel que el nuestro, el de “El lector común” nos enaltece y debe hacernos sentir orgullosos.
En una reseña supe decir que me apasionaba esa inolvidable frase de Jorge Luis Borges "Que otros se jacten de las páginas que han escrito; a mí me enorgullecen las que he leído”.
El Borges lector, el agradecido que a su vez homenajea a sus escritores favoritos en sus ensayos “Inquisiciones” y “Otras inquisiciones”, los tres volúmenes de “Obra crítica” que nos regaló Julio Cortázar o los dos tomos de “Crítica literaria” de Edgar Allan Poe son otros ejemplos que se suman al recordado e impecable ensayo “El horror sobrenatural en la literatura” de H. P. Lovecraft.
Lo mismo pasa con “El lector común”. Sus sentidas palabras hacia aquellos autores que la marcaron en la vida y que le permitieron ser la gran escritora que fue, cobran vida en este pequeño libro que es sólo una parte de los dos que conforman el original en inglés.
Por sus páginas desfilan grandes nombres: todos los griegos (los había leído en su totalidad), su idolatrado Daniel Defoe, el análisis al “Robinson Crusoe” de este, sigue con Jane Austen, con Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Thomas de Quincey, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, James Joyce y muchos más.
Para el final nos regala un apartado titulado “¿Cómo debe leerse un libro?, que realmente no tiene desperdicio.
He leído unos cuantos libros ya de esta genial mujer que se llamó Virginia Woolf, pero a esta faceta, la de una simple lectora la amé incluso más.
Leer a los grandes autores y escritoras que dio la literatura en su otra faceta, la misma que la nuestra, la de lectores, no tiene precio.
Que seres tan gigantes a quienes le debemos nuestra pasión por la literatura se posicionen en el mismo nivel que el nuestro, el de “El lector común” nos enaltece y debe hacernos sentir orgullosos.
En una reseña supe decir que me apasionaba esa inolvidable frase de Jorge Luis Borges "Que otros se jacten de las páginas que han escrito; a mí me enorgullecen las que he leído”.
El Borges lector, el agradecido que a su vez homenajea a sus escritores favoritos en sus ensayos “Inquisiciones” y “Otras inquisiciones”, los tres volúmenes de “Obra crítica” que nos regaló Julio Cortázar o los dos tomos de “Crítica literaria” de Edgar Allan Poe son otros ejemplos que se suman al recordado e impecable ensayo “El horror sobrenatural en la literatura” de H. P. Lovecraft.
Lo mismo pasa con “El lector común”. Sus sentidas palabras hacia aquellos autores que la marcaron en la vida y que le permitieron ser la gran escritora que fue, cobran vida en este pequeño libro que es sólo una parte de los dos que conforman el original en inglés.
Por sus páginas desfilan grandes nombres: todos los griegos (los había leído en su totalidad), su idolatrado Daniel Defoe, el análisis al “Robinson Crusoe” de este, sigue con Jane Austen, con Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Thomas de Quincey, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, James Joyce y muchos más.
Para el final nos regala un apartado titulado “¿Cómo debe leerse un libro?, que realmente no tiene desperdicio.
He leído unos cuantos libros ya de esta genial mujer que se llamó Virginia Woolf, pero a esta faceta, la de una simple lectora la amé incluso más.
February 5, 2021
Free download available at Project Gutenberg
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and Project Gutenberg will publish it.
_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
ΙII. 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
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and Project Gutenberg will publish it.
_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
ΙII. 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
January 21, 2010
By turns delightful, instructive, and illuminating. I don't think I've done so much simultaneous marking and laughing aloud since school.
One of the great pleasures was in learning about writers I knew nothing about, from the famous ones to the totally obscure. Woolf could summarize like nobody's business; she delighted in making long semi-coloned lists of absurdities (as I believe she remarked of some other writer in the collection); she could distill a writer's entire oeuvre into a few short, sharp, enviable words, yet, when the writer's worth reading, Woolf's remarks only invite the reader to explore the work more thoroughly--they're an invitation, rather than a closure. (On the other hand, she could also damn with faint praise, as in "Miss Mitford"). Another great pleasure was in the conversation about writers I knew a great deal about, so that I rejoiced in every insightful compliment to Jane Austen's and Emily Bronte's genius, and to the experience of reading the very flawed but utterly ravishing Jane Eyre (which, if I were honest, I'd acknowledge as Number One Favorite for me, knocking out To the Lighthouse and Lolita). There was rarely a moment when I didn't find the book inspirational. She made me think about things I hadn't, but should have, noted in Chekhov and Dostoevsky; she could talk The Writer's Life with freshness and insight; she made me ashamed of my lack of generosity and hard work as a reader. And, I was struck by the conversation even in those rare moments where I disagreed with her: I'm not sure I found her discussion of Heart of Darkness seaworthy; I found her analysis of Dorothea in Middlemarch ridiculous, in a way that should have been kind of personally embarrassing to Woolf herself; I both agree and disagree with her attitude toward Ulysses, but feel that our negativity indicates a certain immaturity in both of us; I found her remarks on The Old Wives' Tale a bit churlish, and, though they made sense in the context of her fraught relationship with Arnold Bennett, I wish she'd gone for humor rather than spite. But overall, there is so much intellect and wonderful wordsmithing, and such humor and wit and sauciness: I know that I'll come back to it in the future and learn even more. And maybe learn enough to change my mind about my few qualms.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I didn't so much enjoy the first three essays, and almost didn't carry on, but I'm glad I did. Why didn't I like them? I don't know. It may have been because I wasn't familiar with the writers she was discussing (e.g., the Pastons), although other essays on writers I didn't know at all (Montaigne and Margaret Cavendish) were wondrously amusing to me. It may have been the quotidian content of the Pastons' letters, yet Woolf managed to infuse the lives of the similarly quotidian John Evelyn and Archbishop Thomson with zing and an abundance of humor. It may be that I don't really understand poetry or drama, so "The Elizabethan Lumber Room" was kind of lost on me, and that I don't know medieval literature, so that the sentence on Chaucer that I fond striking turned out to be, in Karl's eyes, a dreadfully unsophisticated reading of The Canterbury Tales--yet I enjoyed "Addison," toward whom I'm also unsympathetic. So, if you're finding yourself bogged down in the first forty pages, keep going. "The Duchess of Newcastle" is a howler, I promise, and it keeps getting better.
One of the great pleasures was in learning about writers I knew nothing about, from the famous ones to the totally obscure. Woolf could summarize like nobody's business; she delighted in making long semi-coloned lists of absurdities (as I believe she remarked of some other writer in the collection); she could distill a writer's entire oeuvre into a few short, sharp, enviable words, yet, when the writer's worth reading, Woolf's remarks only invite the reader to explore the work more thoroughly--they're an invitation, rather than a closure. (On the other hand, she could also damn with faint praise, as in "Miss Mitford"). Another great pleasure was in the conversation about writers I knew a great deal about, so that I rejoiced in every insightful compliment to Jane Austen's and Emily Bronte's genius, and to the experience of reading the very flawed but utterly ravishing Jane Eyre (which, if I were honest, I'd acknowledge as Number One Favorite for me, knocking out To the Lighthouse and Lolita). There was rarely a moment when I didn't find the book inspirational. She made me think about things I hadn't, but should have, noted in Chekhov and Dostoevsky; she could talk The Writer's Life with freshness and insight; she made me ashamed of my lack of generosity and hard work as a reader. And, I was struck by the conversation even in those rare moments where I disagreed with her: I'm not sure I found her discussion of Heart of Darkness seaworthy; I found her analysis of Dorothea in Middlemarch ridiculous, in a way that should have been kind of personally embarrassing to Woolf herself; I both agree and disagree with her attitude toward Ulysses, but feel that our negativity indicates a certain immaturity in both of us; I found her remarks on The Old Wives' Tale a bit churlish, and, though they made sense in the context of her fraught relationship with Arnold Bennett, I wish she'd gone for humor rather than spite. But overall, there is so much intellect and wonderful wordsmithing, and such humor and wit and sauciness: I know that I'll come back to it in the future and learn even more. And maybe learn enough to change my mind about my few qualms.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I didn't so much enjoy the first three essays, and almost didn't carry on, but I'm glad I did. Why didn't I like them? I don't know. It may have been because I wasn't familiar with the writers she was discussing (e.g., the Pastons), although other essays on writers I didn't know at all (Montaigne and Margaret Cavendish) were wondrously amusing to me. It may have been the quotidian content of the Pastons' letters, yet Woolf managed to infuse the lives of the similarly quotidian John Evelyn and Archbishop Thomson with zing and an abundance of humor. It may be that I don't really understand poetry or drama, so "The Elizabethan Lumber Room" was kind of lost on me, and that I don't know medieval literature, so that the sentence on Chaucer that I fond striking turned out to be, in Karl's eyes, a dreadfully unsophisticated reading of The Canterbury Tales--yet I enjoyed "Addison," toward whom I'm also unsympathetic. So, if you're finding yourself bogged down in the first forty pages, keep going. "The Duchess of Newcastle" is a howler, I promise, and it keeps getting better.
February 9, 2019
3.5 stars
Reading this notable book of essays didn't disappoint me since I've long awaited it as well as the second volume (instantly placed an order via Kinokuniya Books in Bangkok). In fact, I've already had the 2-paperback Penguin set edited by Rachel Bowlby and, I think, her interesting essays could be regarded as something that supports our further explorations of the works mentioned in her essays; therefore, we could browse any one we like as an introduction to the real thing.
It's my delight to read her The Common Reader Vol. I and thus more light to me why she wrote these scintillating essays and thus adopted such a title. It's first topic, "THE COMMON READER" is miraculously short, that is, only two paragraphs (a page and three lines). Surprisingly, she told her readers she had adopted it from such a simple phrase in Dr Johnson's Life of Gray. She's defined such a reader as:
Moreover, I can't help wondering why she didn't write anything herself on this great man of letters, critic, essayist and lexicographer and I suspected she might have had her own reason.
I think nearly all of her 21+ essays are worth reading and pondering, however, it depends. I mean it depends on your interest, query or motive in terms of your own literary pursuit. Therefore, I'll say something on "Montaigne" (Essay 6) since he's long been regarded as who wrote the first essays, in other words, as the new literary genre. From her 10 pages and 5 lines, I think we can learn a lot from her exposition and ideas on his life and works. For instance, Montaigne suffered a lot physically and mentally while writing his famous, unique and inspiring topics for posterity. Moreover, some few sentences from "MONTAIGNE" may give you some ideas:
You may love Montaigne more if you can find some of his fine translated essays, abridged or complete, in some good bookstores. Read any topic you like and I think reading Montaigne will inspire your views and applications. Enjoy!
Reading this notable book of essays didn't disappoint me since I've long awaited it as well as the second volume (instantly placed an order via Kinokuniya Books in Bangkok). In fact, I've already had the 2-paperback Penguin set edited by Rachel Bowlby and, I think, her interesting essays could be regarded as something that supports our further explorations of the works mentioned in her essays; therefore, we could browse any one we like as an introduction to the real thing.
It's my delight to read her The Common Reader Vol. I and thus more light to me why she wrote these scintillating essays and thus adopted such a title. It's first topic, "THE COMMON READER" is miraculously short, that is, only two paragraphs (a page and three lines). Surprisingly, she told her readers she had adopted it from such a simple phrase in Dr Johnson's Life of Gray. She's defined such a reader as:
the one who is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole -- a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing. ...; but if he has, as Dr Johnson maintained, some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a result." (pp. 1-2)
Moreover, I can't help wondering why she didn't write anything herself on this great man of letters, critic, essayist and lexicographer and I suspected she might have had her own reason.
I think nearly all of her 21+ essays are worth reading and pondering, however, it depends. I mean it depends on your interest, query or motive in terms of your own literary pursuit. Therefore, I'll say something on "Montaigne" (Essay 6) since he's long been regarded as who wrote the first essays, in other words, as the new literary genre. From her 10 pages and 5 lines, I think we can learn a lot from her exposition and ideas on his life and works. For instance, Montaigne suffered a lot physically and mentally while writing his famous, unique and inspiring topics for posterity. Moreover, some few sentences from "MONTAIGNE" may give you some ideas:
To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is not easy. (p. 59)
We can never doubt for an instant that his book was himself. He refused to teach, he refused to preach; he kept saying that he was just like other people. All his efffort was to write himself down, to communicate, to tell the truth, and that is a 'rugged road, more than it seems'. (p. 59)
To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knoledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province. (p. 64)
You may love Montaigne more if you can find some of his fine translated essays, abridged or complete, in some good bookstores. Read any topic you like and I think reading Montaigne will inspire your views and applications. Enjoy!
April 5, 2021
The common reader... differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole — a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing.
Virginia Woolf. The Common Reader: First Series
I too am a common reader and I felt in great company with her when reading this. Her hunger for books is not much unfamiliar to mine, and as far as reading is concerned this felt like a conversation with myself about my relationship with the books I own, have read, have abandoned, inherited, borrowed or forgotten.
The Common Reader is a slim collection of 18 essays about her lifelong affair with books. While some essays went over my head, her take on writers and subjects I'm familiar with was really thrilling. I enjoyed her pieces on Montaigne, Austen and the Brontë's in particular, also her writing on literary criticism and contemporary art really interested and it felt just as relevant and insightful now as it must have been at the time. She is as sharp and illuminating as always.
Virginia Woolf. The Common Reader: First Series
I too am a common reader and I felt in great company with her when reading this. Her hunger for books is not much unfamiliar to mine, and as far as reading is concerned this felt like a conversation with myself about my relationship with the books I own, have read, have abandoned, inherited, borrowed or forgotten.
The Common Reader is a slim collection of 18 essays about her lifelong affair with books. While some essays went over my head, her take on writers and subjects I'm familiar with was really thrilling. I enjoyed her pieces on Montaigne, Austen and the Brontë's in particular, also her writing on literary criticism and contemporary art really interested and it felt just as relevant and insightful now as it must have been at the time. She is as sharp and illuminating as always.
February 7, 2017
الكتاب ليس سيء أبدًا لكن عنوانه خادع ،لأن القارئ العربي العادي لن يعرف نصف الذين نقدتهم فرجينيا في كتابها هذا ،سيعرف جين أوستن ،ويعرف قصة روبنسون كروزو التي تحولت إلى أنمي بواسطة الأستوديو الشهير (نيبون أنميشين ) باسم فلونة ويعرف رواية جين إير وإيما ومرتفعات ويذرينغ لكن بعض الاسماء الأدبية الأنجليزية التي ذكرتها فرجينيا ليست مشهورة أصلا لدينا أو ربما أعمالهم لم تترجم أو أنا قلة ثقافتي وقلة قراءتي جعلتني أظن ذلك
وشيء الأخر الذي عرفته عندما قرأتُ كتابه أن فرجينيا بالفعل واسعة الثقافة ومطلعة على أشهر وأعمق الأداب التي وددتُ القراءة عنها من بين ذلك (الأدب اليوناني والأدب الروسي ) الأدب الروسي معروف بأدباءه غوغول وداستايفسكي وليف تولستوي وبوشكين تشخيوف بما فيهم الجميع قد قرأ لهم أو سمع بأسماءهم على أقل تقدير وعندما تحدثت فرجينيا عنهم قالت أن الغالبية العظمى من القراء لهم باللغة الأنجليزية لايدركون عظمتهم وهي قالت السبب يرجع إلى أن الترجمة تفقد شيئًا من عظمة النص أو الرواية وهذا صحيح في جميع اللغات ماعدا اللغة العربية التي ترفع بأدباءهم فوق فوق لأنه تتسع لكل شيء في هذا الوجود ولأن اللغة الأنجليزية اللغة ضيقة لا يمكنها الإتساع إن تحدثنا عن الكلمات ومترادفاتها والروسية ضيقة أكثر أيضًا هذا ليس ظلم للغتين ولكنها الحقيقة التي يجب ان تقال ...
أما الأدب اليوناني فإننا نحن العرب من جعل شريانه السباتي يعود إلى الحياة بعدما كان على وشك أن تلفظه كنائس أوروبا لأجل إغلاق عيون الناس عن الحقيقة ،أعمال الأدب اليوناني متسعة جدًا وفرجينيا تحدثت عن سوفوكليس وعن هوميروس صاحب الإلياذة والأوديسة فقط
وقد كانت لدي رغبة بأن أقرأ لفرجينيا مجددًا ولكن لأن أقرأ النقد لأن عقلي لم يكبر بعد وقراءتي لم تتوسع أكثر ،لذلك سأقرأ رواياتها على الأغلب كون الأخ نواف (كتاب ) قد قام برفعها على الانترنت
وهناك تساؤل جال في بالي :برأيكم مالذي دفع فرجينيا إلى الإنتحار هو تساؤل غريب لكن بالفعل يتكرر في رأسي مرارًا وتكرارًا وانا أقرأ ماكتبته
وشيء الأخر الذي عرفته عندما قرأتُ كتابه أن فرجينيا بالفعل واسعة الثقافة ومطلعة على أشهر وأعمق الأداب التي وددتُ القراءة عنها من بين ذلك (الأدب اليوناني والأدب الروسي ) الأدب الروسي معروف بأدباءه غوغول وداستايفسكي وليف تولستوي وبوشكين تشخيوف بما فيهم الجميع قد قرأ لهم أو سمع بأسماءهم على أقل تقدير وعندما تحدثت فرجينيا عنهم قالت أن الغالبية العظمى من القراء لهم باللغة الأنجليزية لايدركون عظمتهم وهي قالت السبب يرجع إلى أن الترجمة تفقد شيئًا من عظمة النص أو الرواية وهذا صحيح في جميع اللغات ماعدا اللغة العربية التي ترفع بأدباءهم فوق فوق لأنه تتسع لكل شيء في هذا الوجود ولأن اللغة الأنجليزية اللغة ضيقة لا يمكنها الإتساع إن تحدثنا عن الكلمات ومترادفاتها والروسية ضيقة أكثر أيضًا هذا ليس ظلم للغتين ولكنها الحقيقة التي يجب ان تقال ...
أما الأدب اليوناني فإننا نحن العرب من جعل شريانه السباتي يعود إلى الحياة بعدما كان على وشك أن تلفظه كنائس أوروبا لأجل إغلاق عيون الناس عن الحقيقة ،أعمال الأدب اليوناني متسعة جدًا وفرجينيا تحدثت عن سوفوكليس وعن هوميروس صاحب الإلياذة والأوديسة فقط
وقد كانت لدي رغبة بأن أقرأ لفرجينيا مجددًا ولكن لأن أقرأ النقد لأن عقلي لم يكبر بعد وقراءتي لم تتوسع أكثر ،لذلك سأقرأ رواياتها على الأغلب كون الأخ نواف (كتاب ) قد قام برفعها على الانترنت
وهناك تساؤل جال في بالي :برأيكم مالذي دفع فرجينيا إلى الإنتحار هو تساؤل غريب لكن بالفعل يتكرر في رأسي مرارًا وتكرارًا وانا أقرأ ماكتبته
September 26, 2018
". . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours."
-Samuel Johnson, The Life of Gray
"Truth, it seems, is various; Truth is to be pursued with all our faculties. Are we to rule out the amusements, the tendernesses, the frivolities of friendship because we love truth? Will truth be quicker found because we stop our ears to music and drink no wine, and sleep instead of talking through the long winter's night? It is not to the cloistered disciplinarian mortifying himself in solitude that we are to turn, but to the well-sunned nature, the man who practises the art of living to the best advantage, so that nothing is stunted but some things are permanently more valuable than others."
-Virginia Woolf, "On Not Knowing Greek"
That first quote serves as the inspiration for this collection of literary essays, and Woolf's stated intention is to approach her material from the perspective of one who "reads for [her] own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others." She even goes so far as to suggest that "common readers" such as herself are "worse educated [than the critic or scholar] and nature has not gifted [them] so generously." I couldn't help snickering a little at this image of Virginia Woolf--a lifelong aristocrat who was among the best-read and most talented writers of her own or any era--as some lowly commoner cobbling together her humble opinions for the pleasure of the other book-reading peasants, but I can appreciate her egalitarian intentions, at least. (It's only fair to mention that Woolf didn't receive a university education, and carried out most of her "studies" alone in her father's library; that, coupled with the fact that she was a woman writing before most British women were allowed even to vote, goes a little way towards explaining her ideas on "commonness.")
In reality, this is one of those genteel tomes from a bygone age that assume not only a working knowledge of ancient Greek, Middle English, and modern French, but also a more-than-passing familiarity with the works of every major European writer since Sophocles. (And I do mean European; I can think of only two American authors--the wannabe-Brits Henry James and T.S. Eliot--who even earn a name drop, and there are no other non-Euros mentioned at all.) Nor are her interests limited to the major writers. Mixed in with the Chaucers and Austens and George Eliots, we also find quite a few pieces dedicated to authors who were obscure even in Woolf's own time. She seems to take great pleasure in exhuming long-ignored memoirs and biographies and breathing new life (however temporarily) into personalities now all but forgotten. A book doesn't have to be good in order for Woolf to appreciate it, it simply needs to suggest a human presence; once she detects that presence, faint and faltering though it may be, her imagination can take it and run.
It's this breathing-to-life that Woolf excels at, and it's because she's so capable that such a culturally-narrow and potentially snobbish collection as this is almost always a joy rather than a struggle to read. True to her mission statement, Woolf doesn't approach literature in the stilted academic manner of a professional critic, smothering the life out of otherwise fine books with heady talk of themes and theories. Rather than subscribing to the "death of the author" model still so popular in university lit programs today, her primary interest is most often in the authors themselves--the infinitely varied assortment of people and personalities who produce great (and not so great) literature. She's not afraid to make bold and sweeping claims, and in fact she seems to revel in them. Often she's wrong, as when she asserts that Emily Brontë will go down in history as a poet rather than a novelist, or devotes a whole essay to Joseph Conrad without once mentioning Heart of Darkness (all the while praising his now largely-unread early works as timeless classics), or suggests that her own era (which gave us not only Woolf herself, but also James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, W.B. Yeats, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, to name just a few) is a period of literary drought that will produce no masterpieces. (Ulysses, she says, is "a memorable catastrophe--immense in daring, terrific in disaster.") But more often she's right, or at least forceful enough in her convictions to persuade us, and it's an exhilarating experience to watch such a master in her element:
"Wuthering Heights is a more difficult book to understand than Jane Eyre, because Emily was a greater poet that Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote she said with eloquence and splendour and passion 'I love', 'I hate', 'I suffer'. Her experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there is no 'I' in Wuthering Heights. There are no governesses. There are no employers. There is love, but it is not the love of men and women. Emily was inspired by some more general conception. The impulse which urged her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt throughout the novel--a struggle, half thwarted but of superb conviction, to say something through the mouths of her characters which is not merely 'I love' or 'I hate', but 'we, the whole human race', and 'you, the eternal powers...' the sentence remains unfinished. It is not strange that it should be so; rather it is astonishing that she can make us feel what she had it in her to say at all."
-"'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights'"
Nevertheless, and whatever Woolf's intentions in writing it, I don't think many people in the 21st century will be clamoring to read The Common Reader. Opening it is a bit like stepping into some vast, ancient library, all mahagony and brown leather, and plucking down at random one after another of the elegantly-bound volumes. Woolf is the librarian, energetic and clever if also a tad stuffy, guiding us through the corridors and offering her opinions--solicited or not--on whatever item catches her eye. Nonfiction though it may be, it reminded me a little of the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, with all their nonexistent authors and endless literary references and peculiarly supernatural notions about the power of books. Readers who are refreshed by a bit of disorientation now and then, or who simply enjoy immersing themselves in the passionate words of someone far smarter and better-read than they will ever be, will find a lot to appreciate here. Those who don't, won't. I happen to be a member of the first group, and I look forward to dipping into volume 2.
July 11, 2013
This was the second time I'd read "The Common Reader", and when I reread books I always find that they show me new faces. Virginia Woolf said the same thing in one of her essays. After rereading this one, I have resolved to look at contemporary literature with a different attitude; I tend to believe that the writers of the past are better than the writers of today, which is, as William James would have said, "Contempt prior to investigation". I spend most of my reading time with books written between 1900-1950, reading the "classics" or the books that have won awards over the decades, and avoid reading much in the way of current bestsellers. Perhaps I need to open my mind a bit, right?
Woolf's prose in this book is lovely, and her evaluations of the books being reviewed are accurate, I think. I would agree with most of her assessments of the books I've read; regarding those that I've not yet read I can't agree or disagree with her. I've found, though, that Woolf generally is an expert reader and reviewer, and that I can trust what she says in nearly all cases.
Next is "The Common Reader, Volume 2" - I know I'll enjoy this one just as much as the first volume.
Woolf's prose in this book is lovely, and her evaluations of the books being reviewed are accurate, I think. I would agree with most of her assessments of the books I've read; regarding those that I've not yet read I can't agree or disagree with her. I've found, though, that Woolf generally is an expert reader and reviewer, and that I can trust what she says in nearly all cases.
Next is "The Common Reader, Volume 2" - I know I'll enjoy this one just as much as the first volume.
August 15, 2017
Se me llena la boca cada vez que hablo de Virginia Woolf, así que me voy a limitar a decir que esta colección de ensayos es fantástica y que, sobre todo, lo que más alucinada me tiene de ella es que todas y cada una de las cosas que cuenta aquí las aprendiera ella misma, sin ningún tipo de respaldo académico. Menuda bofetada en la cara a toda la sociedad de su tiempo que es esta mujer, me encanta.
December 28, 2023
I could never read anything by Virginia Woolf and fail to be inspired. Likewise, reading The Common Reader was to be joyfully affected by her passionate love in literature and the innate belief in the supernatural power of books. The style of these essays are designed for the common reader, 'who reads for [their] own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others', in no pedantic, wordy academic prose, but in such accessible, interesting way that reading her insightful, witty review which are like no others I've ever read, and perceptive literary criticism, her studious, empathic thought she drew from authors' lives and their relationship with their writing was a delightful experience and a refreshing, stimulating conversation I will without a doubt want to revisit again.
November 7, 2022
"Entonces, de pronto, la suave narración se hiende, un arco se abre tras otro, se revela la imagen de algo que siempre se escapa, siempre a la fuga, y el tiempo se detiene."
No conozco ningún crítico profesional, no tengo relación con nadie que haga de sus reseñas un medio para ganarse el pan. Tampoco estoy de acuerdo con que abogar por la objetividad sea totalitarismo: todos somos únicos y así deberían ser nuestras vivas visiones, lo que no obsta para que me repugne el aborregamiento, para que se me haga arduo aceptar tu entusiasmo por Marcial Lafuente Reverte y, al mismo tiempo, contemple con pícara perplejidad que aceptes apoquinar por participar en un taller de lectura de algún "clásico".
Bien, lo dicho: la señora Stephen / Woolf está muy alto en mi podium personal de Grandes de la Literatura, y siempre es un gozo, continuo y constante, la lectura de cualquiera de sus obras. El asombro y la admiración que despiertan su certera trabazón del lenguaje para exponerNos está también presente en sus obras más "teóricas", en sus ensayos casi siempre tan fragmentarios como esta colección de "charlas", de conferencias acerca de la literatura.
Con su habitual y extraordinaria sagacidad va desválandonos y compartiendo con nosotros sus personalísimas y tan sagaces que podríamos considerarlas "instant classics" (también éstas) impresiones y valoraciones acerca de los griegos, de Mary Wollstonecraft (impresionantes ambas), Hardy, las Brontë o incluso la misma Austen, ("Había ideado un método, claro y sereno como siempre, pero más profundo y más sugerente, para transmitir no sólo lo que la gente dice, sino lo que calla; no sólo quiénes son, sino qué es la vida.") de quien me falta tanto por aprender.
Una reivindicación del goce de leer, sí, y también una brindis a nuestra visión personal, pero también un grito por hallar algo más, otro filón, que hay mucho por descubrir, y encontrarlo por nosotros mismos, por favor.
"su capacidad de condensar, de ensanchar, de enunciar de una vez y para siempre."
"El único consejo, en verdad, que una persona puede dar a otra acerca de la lectura es que no se deje aconsejar, que siga su propio instinto, que utilice su sentido común, que llegue a sus propias conclusiones."
"La mayoría de las veces llegamos a los libros con la mente confusa y dividida, exigiendo a la ficción que sea verdad, a la poesía que sea falsa, a la biografía que sea aduladora, a la historia que refuerce nuestros propios prejuicios. Si pudiéramos desterrar todas esas ideas preconcebidas cuando leemos, sería un comienzo admirable. No le dictemos al autor; intentemos convertirnos en él. Seamos sus compañeros de trabajo y sus cómplices. Si nos retraemos y mostramos reparos y críticas al principio, nos estamos impidiendo sacar el mayor provecho posible de lo que leemos. Pero si abrimos la mente al máximo, entonces unos signos e indicios de hermosura casi imperceptible, al cabo de las primeras frases, nos llevarán ante la presencia de un ser humano como ningún otro."
"Hay que ser capaz de caer fácilmente en esos éxtasis, esas palabras desaforadas y en apariencia irrelevantes, esas expresiones a veces obvias y tópicas, para determinar su relevancia o irrelevancia, y atribuirles su relación con el conjunto de la obra."
"La mayor parte de cualquier biblioteca no es más que el registro de semejantes momentos efímeros en las vidas de hombres, mujeres y burros. Toda literatura, cuando envejece, tiene su pila de desperdicios, su registro de momentos desvanecidos y vidas olvidadas contadas con acentos débiles y entrecortados que han perecido. Pero si nos abandonamos al placer de leer desperdicios quedaremos sorprendidos, es más, sobrecogidos por las reliquias de vida humana que se han desechado para que se pudran."
No conozco ningún crítico profesional, no tengo relación con nadie que haga de sus reseñas un medio para ganarse el pan. Tampoco estoy de acuerdo con que abogar por la objetividad sea totalitarismo: todos somos únicos y así deberían ser nuestras vivas visiones, lo que no obsta para que me repugne el aborregamiento, para que se me haga arduo aceptar tu entusiasmo por Marcial Lafuente Reverte y, al mismo tiempo, contemple con pícara perplejidad que aceptes apoquinar por participar en un taller de lectura de algún "clásico".
Bien, lo dicho: la señora Stephen / Woolf está muy alto en mi podium personal de Grandes de la Literatura, y siempre es un gozo, continuo y constante, la lectura de cualquiera de sus obras. El asombro y la admiración que despiertan su certera trabazón del lenguaje para exponerNos está también presente en sus obras más "teóricas", en sus ensayos casi siempre tan fragmentarios como esta colección de "charlas", de conferencias acerca de la literatura.
Con su habitual y extraordinaria sagacidad va desválandonos y compartiendo con nosotros sus personalísimas y tan sagaces que podríamos considerarlas "instant classics" (también éstas) impresiones y valoraciones acerca de los griegos, de Mary Wollstonecraft (impresionantes ambas), Hardy, las Brontë o incluso la misma Austen, ("Había ideado un método, claro y sereno como siempre, pero más profundo y más sugerente, para transmitir no sólo lo que la gente dice, sino lo que calla; no sólo quiénes son, sino qué es la vida.") de quien me falta tanto por aprender.
Una reivindicación del goce de leer, sí, y también una brindis a nuestra visión personal, pero también un grito por hallar algo más, otro filón, que hay mucho por descubrir, y encontrarlo por nosotros mismos, por favor.
"su capacidad de condensar, de ensanchar, de enunciar de una vez y para siempre."
"El único consejo, en verdad, que una persona puede dar a otra acerca de la lectura es que no se deje aconsejar, que siga su propio instinto, que utilice su sentido común, que llegue a sus propias conclusiones."
"La mayoría de las veces llegamos a los libros con la mente confusa y dividida, exigiendo a la ficción que sea verdad, a la poesía que sea falsa, a la biografía que sea aduladora, a la historia que refuerce nuestros propios prejuicios. Si pudiéramos desterrar todas esas ideas preconcebidas cuando leemos, sería un comienzo admirable. No le dictemos al autor; intentemos convertirnos en él. Seamos sus compañeros de trabajo y sus cómplices. Si nos retraemos y mostramos reparos y críticas al principio, nos estamos impidiendo sacar el mayor provecho posible de lo que leemos. Pero si abrimos la mente al máximo, entonces unos signos e indicios de hermosura casi imperceptible, al cabo de las primeras frases, nos llevarán ante la presencia de un ser humano como ningún otro."
"Hay que ser capaz de caer fácilmente en esos éxtasis, esas palabras desaforadas y en apariencia irrelevantes, esas expresiones a veces obvias y tópicas, para determinar su relevancia o irrelevancia, y atribuirles su relación con el conjunto de la obra."
"La mayor parte de cualquier biblioteca no es más que el registro de semejantes momentos efímeros en las vidas de hombres, mujeres y burros. Toda literatura, cuando envejece, tiene su pila de desperdicios, su registro de momentos desvanecidos y vidas olvidadas contadas con acentos débiles y entrecortados que han perecido. Pero si nos abandonamos al placer de leer desperdicios quedaremos sorprendidos, es más, sobrecogidos por las reliquias de vida humana que se han desechado para que se pudran."
February 18, 2015
“We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print”.
I think I may have a minor literary crush on Virginia Woolf. She’s so damn erudite (in absolutely her own, self-made style), witty (drily and almost unconsciously so), brazen and yet also sometimes so frustratingly elusive.
The Common Reader is Woolf’s own version of literary history, mainly English, but with a few Greeks and Russians thrown into the pile.’ The common reader’, a term first coined by Dr Johnson, is not the critic or the scholar but ordinary readers like you and me, although to be honest not many ordinary people are as encyclopedically well-read as Woolf. 70 years after she died by her own hand, she could still never be called ordinary; she merely addresses us common souls.
The first three chapters I didn’t really care for. I read a few Greek authors back in high school and haven’t found reason to re-read them since, so much of the first three chapters was simply lost on me. Then she ventured into more familiar territory, and I was once again an attentive audience, taking in her peculiar yet apt musings on Austen, Brontë, Eliot.
And then she deliberately moved into obscure corners of English literature that I suspect only the most well-read Englishmen with a penchant for long-forgotten authors could relate to, and once again I was a little lost, though not uninterested. She had no qualms about signing some authors off as unfit for posterity, and amid a sea of fabulous quotes I found the above particularly fabulous.
One always learns something when reading Virginia Woolf’s essays (and I enjoy them more than her novels), but it is also clear that this was written many years ago and that even she, as opinionated as she was, would include different names today and perhaps let some of the authors she chose to mention slide further into oblivion.
I think I may have a minor literary crush on Virginia Woolf. She’s so damn erudite (in absolutely her own, self-made style), witty (drily and almost unconsciously so), brazen and yet also sometimes so frustratingly elusive.
The Common Reader is Woolf’s own version of literary history, mainly English, but with a few Greeks and Russians thrown into the pile.’ The common reader’, a term first coined by Dr Johnson, is not the critic or the scholar but ordinary readers like you and me, although to be honest not many ordinary people are as encyclopedically well-read as Woolf. 70 years after she died by her own hand, she could still never be called ordinary; she merely addresses us common souls.
The first three chapters I didn’t really care for. I read a few Greek authors back in high school and haven’t found reason to re-read them since, so much of the first three chapters was simply lost on me. Then she ventured into more familiar territory, and I was once again an attentive audience, taking in her peculiar yet apt musings on Austen, Brontë, Eliot.
And then she deliberately moved into obscure corners of English literature that I suspect only the most well-read Englishmen with a penchant for long-forgotten authors could relate to, and once again I was a little lost, though not uninterested. She had no qualms about signing some authors off as unfit for posterity, and amid a sea of fabulous quotes I found the above particularly fabulous.
One always learns something when reading Virginia Woolf’s essays (and I enjoy them more than her novels), but it is also clear that this was written many years ago and that even she, as opinionated as she was, would include different names today and perhaps let some of the authors she chose to mention slide further into oblivion.
March 31, 2023
Tuve momentos en los que leía muy fácil este ensayo, y otros en los que se me hizo pesado, como ya conocía la prosa de la autora continué con la lectura, terminé descubriendo muchos clásicos ingleses que tengo pendientes😅
Virginia Woolf hace un análisis crítico de varios autores clásicos, algunos alejados de su tiempo y otros no tanto, creo que la mirada cercana de otra escritora aporta un plus a la visión que se nos presenta de los autores y sus obras.
Considero que este es un texto que podría ser más llevadero con un pequeño conocimiento de literatura, tanto características históricas como de estilos. Sin embargo, no es necesario haber leído todas las obras de las que se habla, aunque sería interesante leerlo conociendo mínimamente la forma de escribir de los autores que se analizan, los spoilers nombrados no son tan graves como para arruinar las historias si es que en un futuro se quieren leer.
Virginia Woolf hace un análisis crítico de varios autores clásicos, algunos alejados de su tiempo y otros no tanto, creo que la mirada cercana de otra escritora aporta un plus a la visión que se nos presenta de los autores y sus obras.
Considero que este es un texto que podría ser más llevadero con un pequeño conocimiento de literatura, tanto características históricas como de estilos. Sin embargo, no es necesario haber leído todas las obras de las que se habla, aunque sería interesante leerlo conociendo mínimamente la forma de escribir de los autores que se analizan, los spoilers nombrados no son tan graves como para arruinar las historias si es que en un futuro se quieren leer.
November 15, 2019
بسعادة جامع أنتيكات ( لا تستطيع الحكم على سبب سعادته تبعاً لما جمع ) ، تعرض فرجينيا وولف لبعض الكتاب عبر العصور التي مر بها الأدب الإنجليزي ، فتتعامل مع الأدب كما لو كان قِدراً قديماً مكسوراً لا ينكر عمره أحد ولكن جماله محل شك .
لدى الإنجليز مدرسة فريدة في النقد الأدبي انخرط فيها ابرز كتابهم كفرجينيا وولف و جورج أورويل تقوم على أساس فني رفيع، فيتم تقديم المراجعة الأدبية ضمن مقالة مطولة تصاغ وفقاً لرؤية فنية .
ففي كتابه " لماذا أكتب " أفرد جورج أورويل مقالاً خاصاً لفن كتابة المقالات ، وكذلك فرجينيا وولف التي خصصت حيزاً لعرض رؤيتها لفن كتابة المقالة ضمن صفحات الكتاب الذي بين أيدينا ، ثم أنت تسمع خلال تصفحك لكتابيهما نبض روح فنية وايقاع جمال أدبي يدق صفحة بعض صفحة ، و يسعدني أنا القارئ العادي - الذي لم يفسده التحيز الأدبي والتعصب العلمي كما يرجو - تتبع صوت نبض هذه الروح وايقاعها لدى كتاب انجليز آخرين في قادم الأيام .
لدى الإنجليز مدرسة فريدة في النقد الأدبي انخرط فيها ابرز كتابهم كفرجينيا وولف و جورج أورويل تقوم على أساس فني رفيع، فيتم تقديم المراجعة الأدبية ضمن مقالة مطولة تصاغ وفقاً لرؤية فنية .
ففي كتابه " لماذا أكتب " أفرد جورج أورويل مقالاً خاصاً لفن كتابة المقالات ، وكذلك فرجينيا وولف التي خصصت حيزاً لعرض رؤيتها لفن كتابة المقالة ضمن صفحات الكتاب الذي بين أيدينا ، ثم أنت تسمع خلال تصفحك لكتابيهما نبض روح فنية وايقاع جمال أدبي يدق صفحة بعض صفحة ، و يسعدني أنا القارئ العادي - الذي لم يفسده التحيز الأدبي والتعصب العلمي كما يرجو - تتبع صوت نبض هذه الروح وايقاعها لدى كتاب انجليز آخرين في قادم الأيام .
September 8, 2020
Me ha gustado mucho éste libro sobre charlas que dió Virginia Woolf sobre literatura, poesía , teatro clásico griego... Principalmente porque está escrito de forma cercana, en un lenguaje que llega a muchos , se teme a la prosa de Virginia , se la juzga de entreverada, elitista, compleja.
Pero aquí no, nos habla de autores como Austen, Hardy, Las Bronte, George Eliott, y sus obras con admiración y sencillez.
Lo recomiendo mucho a los admiradores de Virginia para observarla desde la no ficción, y quién guste de estas obras y autores, no decepciona.
Me parece que hay una segunda parte. También hay libros de Cartas, diarios, sobre Londres y su vida allí, Las mujeres y la literatura...Como digo si interesa la autora así como su visión más personal y de no ficción..
Pero aquí no, nos habla de autores como Austen, Hardy, Las Bronte, George Eliott, y sus obras con admiración y sencillez.
Lo recomiendo mucho a los admiradores de Virginia para observarla desde la no ficción, y quién guste de estas obras y autores, no decepciona.
Me parece que hay una segunda parte. También hay libros de Cartas, diarios, sobre Londres y su vida allí, Las mujeres y la literatura...Como digo si interesa la autora así como su visión más personal y de no ficción..
May 30, 2025
This collection of essays about literature (sort of, mostly, among other things) is a a book to pick up every so often, not to blast through, it isn’t a quick read even though each essay is short. I have been reading it in small bites so I can think about it as I go along, but I still think I need to reread it a few times. I have given four stars just because I enjoyed some essays a lot more than others so it is probably 4.5 overall.
Woolfs writing is an absolute delight. Her language is incredible, most definitely protean, just as you begin to join her in what she is saying, she slips away, changes tack and shape shifts into a new idea. It is both difficult and an exciting ride. I think it is quite radiantly brilliant. I love how she takes just words, words, words and moulds (U.K. moulds, US molds I think?) them so they are a delight to hear when spoken aloud.
As I said, I will need to reread these but on a first read of this collection my favourite essays are:
On Not Knowing Greek.
Pastons and Chaucer.
The chapter about the Brontes ( and I totally agree with her comments on Emily esp. her poetry)
The Patron and the Crocus.
The Russian Point of View
The Elizabethan Lumber Room
Woolfs writing is an absolute delight. Her language is incredible, most definitely protean, just as you begin to join her in what she is saying, she slips away, changes tack and shape shifts into a new idea. It is both difficult and an exciting ride. I think it is quite radiantly brilliant. I love how she takes just words, words, words and moulds (U.K. moulds, US molds I think?) them so they are a delight to hear when spoken aloud.
As I said, I will need to reread these but on a first read of this collection my favourite essays are:
On Not Knowing Greek.
Pastons and Chaucer.
The chapter about the Brontes ( and I totally agree with her comments on Emily esp. her poetry)
The Patron and the Crocus.
The Russian Point of View
The Elizabethan Lumber Room
Read
September 2, 2013I'm marking this as "read," which is not the case. I read about a hundred pages of it. But I'm not "currently reading it" anymore either. I'm picking it up now and again and reading an essay. I'll finish it at some point this year, but it doesn't seem honest to leave it up there on "currently-reading."
And if we bookworms can't be honest on our bookshelves at least, whatever is the world coming to?
And if we bookworms can't be honest on our bookshelves at least, whatever is the world coming to?
Read
August 31, 2020I don’t know what to say to be honest. Maybe it’s the selection of essays in my edition, or maybe I’m not educated enough for this but I was bored for the majority of time reading this. I won’t rate it because I feel like my lack of enjoyment and understanding is on me and not the fault of the book so it feels unfair to give it 2 stars as I normally would.
December 9, 2017
terminando o ano com um dos livros que mais fez sentido pra mim nesse 2017 ♥️
September 20, 2018
ainda não me encantei pela Virgínia Woolf ficcionista, mas estou completamente apaixonada pelos seus ensaios (ainda mais por esses ensaios, sobre a leitura, os romances e a ficção)
December 15, 2020
This is a 4.5 review.
As an English teacher, it's strange that I've stated (often) my distaste for literary analysis. Not my students' work -- that writing is interesting and fresh and earnest...if also immature and clouded and unorganized.
My issue is with the adults, beyond their college days, writing analyses of literature for....who, exactly? The enterprise seems useless, not to mention snobbish. As an English major, I felt grateful that my professors so rarely had us reference the analyses of others. Because what purpose would it serve? I needed to write about Hamlet. I needed to state my own claim, to discover Shakespeare's country for myself, so to speak. Other analysists got in the way. Have you ever tried wearing the headphones in an art museum? The ones that talk over the paintings and artists? That's what literary analysis felt like to me. It could offer some interesting background information, but, mostly, it felt distracting, tedious, and have I said snobbish already?
I say all this because, against my bias, I have loved reading Virginia Woolf's literary analysis. That's what this book is if you, like me, hadn't heard of "The Common Reader." Her analysis is an ocean fed by streams of love-- love for the English language, love for the craft of writing, love for the authors would attend to their work. Well, most of those authors. She does, sharply and deftly, cut down some of her contemporaries and it's hard not to enjoy those moments as well. Does anyone create a politely worded but absolutely destructive insult like the British?
Woolf gives a full picture of literature that, even if you don't agree with her, is something to marvel at. She made me want to sit down and write -- with purpose and logic -- why my favorite books work, what they do, and how they do it. She made me want to give the authors of those books an attention that celebrates, honors, and remembers. Literature gives a lot. Woolf, in "The Common Reader" gives back to it. And, personally, she gave literary analysis back to me.
As an English teacher, it's strange that I've stated (often) my distaste for literary analysis. Not my students' work -- that writing is interesting and fresh and earnest...if also immature and clouded and unorganized.
My issue is with the adults, beyond their college days, writing analyses of literature for....who, exactly? The enterprise seems useless, not to mention snobbish. As an English major, I felt grateful that my professors so rarely had us reference the analyses of others. Because what purpose would it serve? I needed to write about Hamlet. I needed to state my own claim, to discover Shakespeare's country for myself, so to speak. Other analysists got in the way. Have you ever tried wearing the headphones in an art museum? The ones that talk over the paintings and artists? That's what literary analysis felt like to me. It could offer some interesting background information, but, mostly, it felt distracting, tedious, and have I said snobbish already?
I say all this because, against my bias, I have loved reading Virginia Woolf's literary analysis. That's what this book is if you, like me, hadn't heard of "The Common Reader." Her analysis is an ocean fed by streams of love-- love for the English language, love for the craft of writing, love for the authors would attend to their work. Well, most of those authors. She does, sharply and deftly, cut down some of her contemporaries and it's hard not to enjoy those moments as well. Does anyone create a politely worded but absolutely destructive insult like the British?
Woolf gives a full picture of literature that, even if you don't agree with her, is something to marvel at. She made me want to sit down and write -- with purpose and logic -- why my favorite books work, what they do, and how they do it. She made me want to give the authors of those books an attention that celebrates, honors, and remembers. Literature gives a lot. Woolf, in "The Common Reader" gives back to it. And, personally, she gave literary analysis back to me.
March 28, 2022
Este libro hay que leerlo con mesura, espaciado y sabiendo de que y de quién se habla en cada uno de los ensayos en que está dividido.
En aquellos en los que conocía la obra o el autor del que hablaba, me he sentido como asistente a una lección magistral de Virginia, y he disfrutado de su entusiasmo y opinión mordaz como siempre. ¡Qué genio de mujer!, ¡cómo se casa con nadie y sabe cuando mojarse!.
En el resto, me ha podido el tedio y he podido ver hasta un patrón repetitivo en cada uno.
Y es que quizás si concepto de lector común, no sea tan común…
En aquellos en los que conocía la obra o el autor del que hablaba, me he sentido como asistente a una lección magistral de Virginia, y he disfrutado de su entusiasmo y opinión mordaz como siempre. ¡Qué genio de mujer!, ¡cómo se casa con nadie y sabe cuando mojarse!.
En el resto, me ha podido el tedio y he podido ver hasta un patrón repetitivo en cada uno.
Y es que quizás si concepto de lector común, no sea tan común…
Read
August 9, 2019The very notion of "common reader" makes me rightaway want to read this, as we are all common readers here. Honestly, most figures mentioned in this volume are unfamiliar to me and I havent read any of their works which makes my reading be somewhat in somnolent status and, yea, my to-read list a bit longer too.
I still go to the last page thou, cause just knowing what subject provokes Virginia to think and write about in her essays is a motivation. Ill be back another day.
I still go to the last page thou, cause just knowing what subject provokes Virginia to think and write about in her essays is a motivation. Ill be back another day.
July 10, 2023
Siempre me pareció curioso cómo Woolf tuvo una escritura tan densa en sus novelas, pero tan simple y didáctica en los ensayos. En este en concreto, nos habla de sus lecturas, siendo reseñable los capítulos que dedica a Jane Austen y «Cumbres Borrascosas», además del último para hablar de la libertad de crítica de aquellas personas que aman la lectura y crecen con ella.
May 3, 2020
I am lying in bed with a soft blanket and hot chocolate, while Ms. Woolf holds my hand and tells me stories. This is what reading her work feels like.
January 12, 2024
Woolf is one of a kind. Knowledgeable on so many levels and with so many subjects. Still ahead of her time.
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