The Common Reader

In her Common Reader series, Virginia Woolf remarks upon life and literature throughout a compilation of essays, many of which originally appeared in publications such as Vogue, The Nation, and the Times Literary Supplement. The second part of the Common Reader series, this specific book was published in 1932 by Virginia herself, along with her husband Leonard, at the Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square in London. It is the “second impression” of the first edition, printed by R. & R. Clark, Ltd. in Edinburgh.

The Hogarth Press venture originally began as a hobby when the Woolfs were living in Richmond, later becoming a source of supplemental income and a therapeutic, tactile alternative to the stresses of Virginia’s writing. I found the link between Tycho Brahe’s singular printing endeavor and the Woolfs’ publishing venture to be interesting. Darton, Johns, and Ezell all question the “fixity” of print, and it is Johns specifically who argues that “printed texts were not intrinsically trustworthy. When they were in fact trusted, it was only as a result of hard work” (p. 284). The phenomenon of publishing and printing your own written work (although this particular copy wasn’t printed by the Woolfs themselves) eliminates the variables that would be possible in a typical “communications circuit” (i.e. Darnton), but perhaps only to a certain extent.

The fact that the Woolfs published and printed much of Virginia’s writing does not undermine the idea of “publication” being primarily social in nature (and I would argue that their doing so is, in fact, "social" to the core). Publication is merely a part of the communications circuit. On the title page of The Common Reader – Second Series, Virginia presents a quote by Dr. Johnson in Life of Gray: “…I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claim to poetical honours.” It is the reader who truly completes the communications circuit, who is responsible for interpreting signs to create meaning, and who ultimately must determine the veracity of the methods by which those signs were produced.