Book summary
Краткое содержание: Обыкновенный читатель
- Чтение: 8 мин.
- 10 key ideas
- Аудио скоро
Sir John Paston reads Chaucer in a smoky, drafty room while his father's tombstone waits unmade.
3 months free · unlimited eBooks, audiobooks and summaries, and print and large print at cost
Nothing to pay today · Мы отправим вам электронное письмо до списания средств. · Отмените онлайн в два нажатия
Обыкновенный читатель — кратко о книге
Краткое содержание: 8 min на чтение
- Время чтения
- Около 5 h 25 min4 h 15 min fast, 6 h 25 min slow
- Длительность
- Слов: 77 100
- Уровень в библиотеке
- Сложное чтение long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- Первая публикация
- 1925by Вирджиния Вулф
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Сколько времени нужно на чтение классики · Обновлено
Бесплатно на 3 мес.
Получите полное краткое содержание Обыкновенный читатель бесплатно
- 200 000+ классических книг в формате электронных книг, аудиокниг и кратких содержаний на 15 минут, а также печатные книги, в том числе крупным шрифтом, по себестоимости печати
- До 5 читателей в вашей семье на одном плане
Обыкновенный читатель in short
The Common Reader argues, by example, that reading is an act of building. Woolf takes a scrap of a letter, a line of Greek or a page of Montaigne and assembles a picture, then checks the picture against the book. She never claims the last word.
What Обыкновенный читатель is about
What would you do if you wanted to love books without being a scholar? Virginia Woolf answers with a figure she calls the common reader. She takes the phrase from Dr. Johnson, who trusted the plain sense of ordinary readers over the dogmatism of experts.
The Common Reader is a collection of essays, many first printed in newspapers and journals. Woolf was a novelist and critic, and she writes as a reader who cannot stop. She moves from a fifteenth-century Norfolk family to Chaucer, Montaigne, Defoe, Jane Austen, the Russians and the writers of her own day. You get portraits, opinions, jokes and a way of reading.
Для кого. Readers who delight in books about books and lively reflections on Chaucer, Austen or Montaigne will love this collection. It also suits pleasure readers seeking confidence in their tastes and new authors to explore.
The 10 key ideas
Key idea 1 · free to read
Read for pleasure and build your own whole
Woolf opens with a sentence from Dr. Johnson. He says the common sense of readers, untainted by literary prejudice, must in the end decide which poets deserve honor. She uses it to define a figure who is easy to overlook. The common reader is less learned than the critic and reads for his own enjoyment, not to teach or to correct anyone.
What does such a reader actually do? He gathers odds and ends from whatever he finds and builds some kind of whole. It may be a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age or a theory of the art of writing. The structure is ramshackle, hasty and often wrong, yet it gives him affection, laughter and argument. Woolf insists he has a share in the final distribution of poetic honors.
For you, the lesson is freeing. You do not need a degree to hold a view worth stating, and you need not apologize for what you enjoy.
Read for your own pleasure, and trust the picture you build from what you read.
- 2Начните читать бесплатно
Ordinary letters and Chaucer bring a vanished age alive
Woolf begins with the Paston family of fifteenth-century Norfolk, whose letters survive.
- 3Начните читать бесплатно
Greek literature speaks outdoors and in bare words
Woolf starts by admitting how hard it is to claim knowledge of Greek.
- 4Начните читать бесплатно
Voyages fed poetry while the self found its voice
The Elizabethan Lumber Room is Woolf's name for Hakluyt's collections of voyages, a heap of sacks, maps, silks, tusks and rumors.
- 5Начните читать бесплатно
Montaigne wrote himself down and called it communication
Woolf begins with a small scene.
- 6Начните читать бесплатно
Lives that left little trace still repay a visit
Woolf has a special love for the forgotten.
- 7Начните читать бесплатно
Defoe and Addison show the power of plain skill
Woolf argues that Robinson Crusoe has made people forget Defoe's finest books, Moll Flanders and Roxana.
- 8Начните читать бесплатно
Three women novelists show what narrow genius can do
Woolf writes of Jane Austen from scraps, since Cassandra Austen burned the letters.
- 9Начните читать бесплатно
Fiction should follow life, not fashion, and the Russians show how
In Modern Fiction, Woolf quarrels with Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Galsworthy.
- 10Начните читать бесплатно
Critics, patrons and essayists all shape what gets written
How It Strikes a Contemporary begins at a dinner table where two critics disagree about a new book and agree about Milton.
Read all 10 key ideas now
3 months free, then 0,14 USD a day: unlimited eBooks, audiobooks and summaries, and print and large print at cost.
- Nothing to pay today
- Мы отправим вам электронное письмо до списания средств.
- Отмените онлайн в два нажатия
The whole book is coming to your plan
The full text of Обыкновенный читатель opens soon. Keep this summary as a file today.
Paperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way. Email me when it is printed
Вопросы о книге Обыкновенный читатель
What is The Common Reader about?
It is a collection of essays on literature and reading. Woolf writes about the Paston letters, Chaucer, Greek drama, Montaigne, Defoe, Jane Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot, Russian fiction and the problems of writing in her own time.
Who is the common reader?
The term comes from Dr. Johnson. It means an ordinary reader who reads for pleasure, not to teach or to correct others, and who builds his own picture of an author or an age from whatever scraps he finds.
Do I need to know the authors before I read it?
No. Woolf writes in a conversational voice and often brings writers to life through vivid scenes or anecdotes. Each essay stands on its own, so you can begin anywhere and meet new authors as you go.
Which essays are the best known in The Common Reader?
Readers often single out Modern Fiction, On Not Knowing Greek, Montaigne, Jane Austen and The Russian Point of View. Modern Fiction is cited for its image of life as a luminous halo, and the others for their portraits.
What is the main message of the book?
Reading is a creative act open to everyone. Trust your own pleasure, build your own picture of a writer, test it against the best books, and ask what makes writing alive instead of waiting for authority to decide.
Как сослаться на это издание
Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-common-reader.
Woolf, V. (2026). The common reader. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-common-reader (Original work published 1925)
Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-common-reader.
@book{woolf2026common,
author = {Woolf, Virginia},
title = {The Common Reader},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-common-reader},
note = {First published 1925}
}
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Pride and Prejudice
The Iliad
Romeo and Juliet
The Picture of Dorian GrayБесплатно на 3 мес.
Получите полное краткое содержание Обыкновенный читатель бесплатно
- 200 000+ классических книг в формате электронных книг, аудиокниг и кратких содержаний на 15 минут, а также печатные книги, в том числе крупным шрифтом, по себестоимости печати
- До 5 читателей в вашей семье на одном плане
