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A review by jmiae
The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf
4.0
I made the mistake of not understanding that this book is meant to be a collection of (relatively easily digestible) literary criticism essays until about the sixth essay, which rather hindered my comprehension initially. Additionally, and perhaps it's just me, I generally find it difficult to fully appreciate literary criticism unless I am fairly familiar with the writers whose work is being critiqued. As a result, my favourite essays were those on Jane Austen, the Brontes, the Russians, as well as the more general ones on the Modern Essay and contemporary writing.
In particular, it was amazing to read her perspective on the work that was being published at the time she was writing, and compare it to the preceding century (1800-1821). We have the privilege of hindsight to fawn over the Jazz Age, the Lost Generation, the Bloomsbury Group, in the same way that she praised Jane Austen, John Keats, Walter Scott, etc. But her thoughts on the influence of Time on the determination of an age's literary masterpieces are sublime:
"Their poems, plays, biographies, novels are not books but notebooks, and Time, like a good schoolmaster, will take them in his hands, point to their blots and erasions, and tear them across; but he will not throw them into the waste-paper basket. He will keep them because other students will find them very useful. It is from notebooks of the present that the masterpieces of the future are made."
In particular, it was amazing to read her perspective on the work that was being published at the time she was writing, and compare it to the preceding century (1800-1821). We have the privilege of hindsight to fawn over the Jazz Age, the Lost Generation, the Bloomsbury Group, in the same way that she praised Jane Austen, John Keats, Walter Scott, etc. But her thoughts on the influence of Time on the determination of an age's literary masterpieces are sublime:
"Their poems, plays, biographies, novels are not books but notebooks, and Time, like a good schoolmaster, will take them in his hands, point to their blots and erasions, and tear them across; but he will not throw them into the waste-paper basket. He will keep them because other students will find them very useful. It is from notebooks of the present that the masterpieces of the future are made."