Table Of ContentVirginia Woolf’s
Common Reader
Katerina Koutsantoni
Virginia Woolf’s Common ReadeR
Virginia Woolf’s
Common Reader
Katerina Koutsantoni
© Katerina Koutsantoni 2009
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Katerina Koutsantoni has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Koutsantoni, Katerina.
Virginia Woolf’s Common reader.
1. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941. Common reader. i. title
828.9’1209–dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Koutsantoni, Katerina.
Virginia Woolf’s Common reader / Katerina Koutsantoni.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6264-8 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7546-9456-4 (ebook) 1. Woolf,
Virginia, 1882–1941—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941—
Knowledge—Literature. 3. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941. Common reader. 4. Woolf,
Virginia, 1882–1941. essays i. title.
Pr6045.o72Z758 2009
823’.912—dc22
2009003418
isBn 978-0-7546-6264-8 (HBk)
eisBn 978-0-7546-9456-4 (EBk.V)
Contents
acknowledgements vii
introduction – Conversing with the reader 1
1 Why go on with these essays? 19
2 We must remain readers 47
3 i do not love to be led by the nose … by authority 75
4 to forget one’s own sharp absurd little personality … & practise
anonymity 101
5 in all writing, it’s the person’s own edge that counts 123
6 society is a nest of glass boxes one separate from another 147
Conclusion – With this odd mix up of public & private i left off 175
Bibliography 197
Index 217
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Acknowledgements
I wrote this book during a rather difficult year and I want to thank my sister,
Dimitra, for always being there for me, offering advice, a perfect eye for detail and
sharp editing skills, helping me to bring this project, amongst many others over
the years, to completion. My parents, adamantia and leonidas Koutsantonis, are
right next to her, always serving as a pillar of warm love. this past year i feel i
have got to know you so much better in a way I cannot explain, so, although you
cannot hear me, i want to say how proud i am you are my parents. i also wish to
thank my close friends, old and new, both in the UK and back in Greece, for their
priceless support.
I would like to extend my thanks to Ashgate Publishers for pushing my proposal
forward, offering me an incredibly positive initial review, and consistent academic
and technical support throughout the process. Lastly, I want to thank Virginia Woolf
for offering her life and work, a source of ceaseless interest and mystery which has
inspired me for years now. Both for her and for me, and in the words of Montaigne,
I’d like to think that it was the journey that mattered, not the arrival.
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introduction
Conversing with the reader
‘all i desire is fame’, wrote Virginia Woolf in 1925 quoting Margaret Cavendish,
Duchess of newcastle.1 and fame is exactly what she earned during her thirty-
seven year-long career in writing. Woolf has been the focus of intense attention
and the target of continuous criticism ever since 1904 when she started producing
published work of varied nature and in different genres. Success in the writing
of essays, novels, short stories and biographies testifies to a unique versatility,
rendering Woolf’s writing, according to anna snaith, responsible for ‘generating
divergent readings, turning her work into a site of contestation with varying
agendas’.2 For just over a century now, Woolf has aroused admiration, interest,
scrutiny and even contempt by critics, while the amount and quality of the work
she offered to her audiences explain her characterisation as an outstanding figure
in twentieth-century literature. Her stature, of universal acclaim for decades now,
has surely been justified by now and her work is worth examining further.
This book focuses exclusively on Virginia Woolf’s essays, and more specifically
those included in her 1925 Common Reader: First Series and 1932 Second Common
Reader; the examination of essays from posthumous collections is also, however,
incorporated in the analysis. even though recent years have seen a gradually
increasing interest in Woolf’s essayistic writing and the abandonment of the idea
that her novels play a primary role in relation to her criticism, research in this area
still remains limited; this book comes to add to the existing literature on the essays
by attempting a more focused view. studies conducted in this area have tended to
look either at individual pieces or at a random selection of essays, to exemplify
one or another of a variety of incommensurate positions. What is missing is a
comprehensive study of the two volumes of The Common Reader with regard
to their thematic pattern, which plays a vital role in discerning Woolf’s beliefs
regarding the processes of writing, reading and criticism. such thematic sequence
is charged with additional significance in that Woolf herself was responsible for
the formulation of the volumes, as opposed to posthumous collections in which
the order of the essays included did not adhere to a particular thematic order but
1 Virginia Woolf, ‘the Duchess of newcastle’, The Common Reader: First Series,
1925, 5th edn (London: Hogarth Press, 1942), p. 98.
2 anna snaith, Virginia Woolf: Public and Private negotiations (Basingstoke:
Macmillan and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 116.
