THE COMMON READER 1930

Octavo. Red cloth boards, blind-stamped, gilt spine. [iii],334pp. 8¾ x5¾ in. Cream pictorial dust jacket printed brown and green, designed by Vanessa Bell. Boards bright and clean, ink ownership signature and date on front free endpaper, edges dusty, otherwise very good or better, in an unclipped dusty, dust jacket with a few chips at extremities and a small loss at the at the upper spine and upper fore-tip. From the collection of R. O. Blechman, an American animator, illustrator, children's-book author, graphic novelist and editorial cartoonist whose work has been the subject of retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art and other institutions. Scarce in dust jacket.

First American edition, third impression. Published 14 May 1925; 2000 copies printed at $3.50. There was a second impression of 535 copies in November 1927, and a third of 500 in December of 1930, of which this edition is a copy. There were additional impressions in 1933, 1942, and 1944 of 500 copies each. THE COMMON READER is a collection of essays written by Woolf, some of which appeared originally in the Times Literary Supplement and the Dial, while others appear here for the first time.  It consists of two series of essays, where Woolf explores various literary topics and authors. Through her elegant prose, she examines the nature of reading, the role of literature in society, and provides engaging critiques of authors such as William Shakespeare, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, and Chaucer, among others. Her influential essays “On Not Knowing Greek,” and “Modern Fiction” are included, and an additional essay “Lives of the Obscure, III, Miss Ormerod” appears in this edition, but not in the English editions; it was first published in the Dial, New York, December 1924.  Overall, this influential collection offers a rich exploration of literature from a unique and perceptive perspective.