AUTUMN SALE 25% OFF FOREVER
Available for the next few days…
For the next week or so, you can get 25% off the price of a Common Reader subscription.
Why go paid?
These are some of the animating principles of The Common Reader.
The aim is simple: I want to understand great literature, how it works, whence it derives, what it means.
This is a project in defiance of mediocrity.
This isn’t one of those Substacks primarily devoted to community, development, personal growth, and so on.
You might find writing advice here, and it might help you as a writer, who knows. You will certainly find some version of self-help. But my principal business is to improve opinion into knowledge. Yours and mine.
I am here to provoke you into reading the best that has been thought and said.
If you agree with these principles (from the mission statement I set out a few months ago), you’ll probably enjoy a paid subscription.
What does that look like?
Paid Subscribers get to read about a range of literary subjects like How to Have Good Taste, The Moral Purpose of Self-Help, and why Lolita is Not a Moral Test.
They also get to join the Shakespeare Book Club. Next year we’ll read Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and several others, as well as some of his contemporaries, and extracts from the King James Bible.
We meet once a month on zoom and I provide essays and videos for those who can’t attend. Here are some examples: Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, Romeo and Juliet.
I write fact-lists about the plays, derive leadership lessons from them, and write about things like how the actors rehearsed.
Reading Shakespeare is one of the most wonderful things you can ever do. If you have that gnawing feeling that you want to get to know some of the work of England’s greatest author, join us!
Perhaps the best benefit of a paid subscription is the archive. It’s now full of writing that helps you understand classic literature. As well as Shakespeare, this includes many nineteenth century novels like Jane Eyre and Bleak House, and writers like Darwin and J.S. Mill.
There’s also the irregular review of reviews, occasional essays, and I am planning a series of close readings, helping you to see exactly how poems work.
What do current subscribers think?
I often get emails from subscribers thanking me for pieces I have written. Here are some of the messages paid subscribers have left me recently.
“You’re the stick poking me in the back to read more, explore more, think more — thank you for pushing me forward a bit!”
“Should have subscribed ages ago. Your writing is so insightful and honest (and without pretension)”
“Your mission statement is a beacon to a soul like mine, and I want to support the stuff that moves me (and that dreams are made on!)”
One Last Reason
Death is coming for us all sooner than we expect. We have to read the great works while we can.
Sign up today and make 2025 the year of Shakespeare…
You get one short life. Make sure you devote some of it to the heights of human accomplishment, whether you subscribe today or not.
Hi Henry, I’ve been on a weekly subscription until now. Is it somehow possible to change this to yearly under the autumn sale, and if so, how do I proceed? Thank a lot for the great content!