Some of these papers appeared originally in the Times Literary Supplement, the Athenaeum, the Nation and Athanaeum, the New Statesman, the London Mercury, the Dial (New York); the New Republic (New York), and I have to thank the editors for allowing me to reprint them here. Some are based upon articles written for various newspapers, while others appear now for the first time.
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The Common Reader, by Virginia Woolf
The Common Reader
There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson’s Life of Gray which might well be written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private people. “. . . 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.” It defines their qualities; it dignifies their aims; it bestows upon a pursuit which devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing very substantial, the sanction of the great man’s approval.