«The Complete Common Reader: First & Second Series (1925 & 1935)» by Virginia Woolf

This carefully crafted ebook: “The Complete Common Reader: First & Second Series (1925 & 1935)” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.

The Common Reader’ is a collection of essays by Virginia Woolf, published in two series, the first in 1925 and the second in 1932. The title indicates Woolf's intention that her essays be read by the educated but non-scholarly “common reader,” who examines books for personal enjoyment. Woolf outlines her literary philosophy in the introductory essay to the first series, “The Common Reader,” and in the concluding essay to the second series, “How Should One Read a Book?” The first series includes essays on Geoffrey Chaucer, Michel de Montaigne, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Joseph Conrad, as well as discussions of the Greek language and the modern essay. The second series features essays on John Donne, Daniel Defoe, Dorothy Osborne, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Hardy, among others.

Table of Contents of the First Series:

• Chapter 1 — The Common Reader

• Chapter 2 — The Pastons and Chaucer

• Chapter 3 — On Not Knowing Greek

• Chapter 4 — The Elizabethan Lumber Room

• Chapter 5 — Notes on an Elizabethan Play

• Chapter 6 — Montaigne

• Chapter 7 — The Duchess of Newcastle

• Chapter 8 — Rambling Round Evelyn

• Chapter 9 — Defoe

• Chapter 10 — Addison

• Chapter 11 — The Lives of the Obscure

• Chapter 12 — Jane Austen

• Chapter 13 — Modern Fiction

• Chapter 14 — “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights”

• Chapter 15 — George Eliot

• Chapter 16 — The Russian Point of View

• Chapter 17 — Outlines

• Chapter 18 — The Patron and the Crocus

• Chapter 19 — The Modern Essay

• Chapter 20 — Joseph Conrad

• Chapter 21 — How it Strikes a Contemporary

Table of Contents of the Second Series:

THE STRANGE ELIZABETHANS

DONNE AFTER THREE CENTURIES

“THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S ARCADIA”

“ROBINSON CRUSOE”

DOROTHY OSBORNE'S “LETTERS”

SWIFT'S “JOURNAL TO STELLA”

THE “SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY”

LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS SON

TWO PARSONS–

I. JAMES WOODFORDE

II. JOHN SKINNER

DR. BURNEY'S EVENING PARTY

JACK MYTTON

DE QUINCEY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

FOUR FIGURES–

I. COWPER AND LADY AUSTEN

II. BEAU BRUMMELL

III. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

IV. DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

WILLIAM HAZLITT

GERALDINE AND JANE

“AURORA LEIGH”

THE NIECE OF AN EARL

GEORGE GISSING

THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH

“I AM CHRISTINA ROSSETTI”

THE NOVELS OF THOMAS HARDY

HOW SHOULD ONE READ A BOOK?