A review by saddlebowl123
The Common Reader - First Series by Virginia Woolf

4.0

This anthology of essays by Virginia Woolf on English literature is arranged chronologically by writer from the high medieval (the Paston documents and Chaucer) to the then current era (post WWI). Many of these have gained classic status, and no wonder. The Paston essay places the documents within their historical context to an extent that you can relate to the persons described as living, breathing, human beings. If there has ever been a better piece on Jane Austen's genius I've never read it. Her portraits of the more obscure writers whose fame either died with them, or at best has flickered on, is of interest to readers of Woolf even if it is not for the subjects themselves. She skewers Wells, Galsworthy and Bennett as writers whose work has outlived their time and purpose (and admirer though I am of these three she does have a point). Her essay on the Brontes is of historical issue inasmuch as it shows the degree to which Anne's work has been rehabilitated since this essay was written (she is not even mentioned here). In her famous essay on George Eliot Woolf dances round Eliot without really getting to grips with her subject. Woolf clearly prefers the loam operas to Romola and Daniel Deronda; Middlemarch she damns with faint praise. I would have liked Woolf's opinion on why water is such a symbol of death throughout Eliot's novels, with the high number of drownings and near-drownings that occur - but hey-ho I'm not a professional literary critic. The last essay featured here, 'How It Strkes A Contemporary', is a passionate defence of modern (and Modernist) literature.

This collection demonstrates that Virginia Woolf was one of the most perceptive writers on English literature of the first half of the 20th century.