The Common Reader

First edition thus. Foolscap 8vo., 240, [16 (publisher's adverts)] pp. Stiff white paper wraps printed in bright blue and black. In a like cream and turquoise dustwrapper (priced 6d to front flap). 1/50,000 copies printed. Published 8 October 1938 in Pelican Books as Vol. A36. Originally issued in 1925 by the author's own Hogarth Press.

Browned, brittle text edges, dustwrapper torn open at edges of upper panel flap, else Very Good.

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 A8d]