The Common Reader

First edition. Demy 8vo. Pp. 305, [3 (blank)]. Pale grey cloth-backed white paper boards, illustrated in grass-green and chocolate-brown by Vanessa Bell to upper cover; lettered in black to spine. Published 23 April 1925 at 12s. 6d. 1/1,250 copies printed.

Sans the scarce dustwrapper. Bookseller ticket to rear pastedown, offsetting to free endpapers, paper-clip impression to pp. 288/89, dried flower remnants to inner margins of pp. 296/97, frayed lower corner of rear board, else an exceptionally fresh, Fine copy.

Woolf's first collection of critical essays written for the "common reader" who is neither scholar nor critic, and reads books for personal enjoyment. "Some of these papers appeared originally in the Times Literary Supplement, the Athenaeum, the Nation and Athenaeum, the New Statesman, the London Mercury, the Dial (New York), and the New Republic (New York)." [From the preface.] Includes 'On Not Knowing Greek', 'Modern Fiction', 'Jane Austen' and 'Montaigne'.

[Kirkpatrick and Clarke A8a; Woolmer 81]