The Common Reader

A collection of essays from the acclaimed author of Mrs. Dalloway on such subjects as Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, and her own literary philosophy.

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

Not written for scholars or critics, these essays are a collection of Virginia Woolf's everyday thoughts about literature and the world—and the art of reading for pleasure. That many of them previousl...