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A review by thatmattcrowe
The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf
4.0
This collection came out in the same year as Mrs Dalloway (1925), and gives good insight into Woolf’s philosophies and inspirations for writing. It starts with reasserting Dr. Johnson’s importance on “the common reader” on who is read, which given Woolf’s reputation as difficult could be seen ironic. But these essays show just what an inviting writer she could be. Despite criticisms of snobbery found in her dismissals of some writers she mostly shows complex opinions on authors and the whole of their works, such as her conflictions on Ulysses, and her writings on Daniel Defoe and Joseph Addison (convincing me to read more of each).
There’s no overt feminist text here like A Room of One’s Own, but putting equal footing for the Brontes, Austen and George Eliot (famously calling Middlemarch one of the “few English novels written for grown-up people) and some very obscure female writings to males in the literary canon makes for its own subversion. Occasionally her pre-contemporary essays would lose my interests, and she puts a lot of emphasis on the author’s importance which made me think she would not be so keen on Roland Barthes. But despite its obvious audience, The Common Reader has wisdom to last.
Highlights: “The Common Reader”, “Defoe”, “Addison”, “Jane Austen”, “Modern Fiction”, “George Eliot”, “The Modern Essay”, “How it Strikes a Contemporary”
There’s no overt feminist text here like A Room of One’s Own, but putting equal footing for the Brontes, Austen and George Eliot (famously calling Middlemarch one of the “few English novels written for grown-up people) and some very obscure female writings to males in the literary canon makes for its own subversion. Occasionally her pre-contemporary essays would lose my interests, and she puts a lot of emphasis on the author’s importance which made me think she would not be so keen on Roland Barthes. But despite its obvious audience, The Common Reader has wisdom to last.
Highlights: “The Common Reader”, “Defoe”, “Addison”, “Jane Austen”, “Modern Fiction”, “George Eliot”, “The Modern Essay”, “How it Strikes a Contemporary”