The test of time. The fin above the wave. The Pastons. The DUNCIAD. Milton’s Satan before his hissing Congress. Johnson and Woolf waft through my mind as I consider the world. Not relative truth but solid thought.
Found your piece fascinating, and a real prompt to read the collection. But my personal highlight was your reminder of the 100th anniversary of Carry On Jeeves, which I fear may not have been your primary point!
I am so pleased to see the appropriate praise heaped on Johnson here. Woolf's criticism I do not know, so I have reserved them, the two Common Reader volumes from the local Library, where they were languishing in the reserve stock in Lowestoft somewhere! At least, somewhat to my surprise, they were still there...
Great literary critics tend not to be academics, or are on the margins of the academy, such as Empson (who in his early books is a humane and constantly illuminating critic), or not in universities at all, such as Edmund Wilson, Coleridge, or T S Eliot. Then there is F R Leavis, of course...
I started the Common Reader less than a year ago and couldn’t remember why I stopped. Picking it up today, I see the bookmark in the middle of the Montaigne essay—I stopped so I could go read Montaigne instead!
You are so right. The Common Reader is wonderful to read in so many ways, and for so many things (a surfeit of so going down here, but hey…). I think it’s her clarity that defines her here and there is something perhaps not of the antidote (although I get what you mean in your final para) but of the exemplar to us all; although, it rather an exacting example before which it is very easy to fall very short (as your points show).
And, thanks for the link to your Liberties piece, which I’ll read later.
I’m inspired to read The Common Reader, and to reacquaint myself with Johnson. We need the passage of time to see clearly and decipher changes. Thank you!
I am so glad to see more attention paid to the hard working woman who did so much more than only write literary novels despite 5 decades of devastating bouts of mental illness.
Virginia Woolf was a politically savvy publisher and editor who made sales calls, a self-educated Intellectual who taught night-school for working women, a journalist who was published in a wide variety of journals — so much more than the elitist writer who was so fragile she only could spend time with a small circle of Bloomsbury writers and artists.
Reading your Woolf praise, I wondered why she had never been translated into Soviet Russia. I didn't know about her existence until I moved to the West. And I fell in love with her novels and read about her life, but not the Common Reader. Thank you.
I've enjoyed Woolf because she writes so well, her judgment is sharp, and she's done the wide reading that supports her opinions. Writers today haven't read enough
Well... I'm sure somebody else can do so far better... To me it's an instinctive (rather than analytically water-tight) response to the novel's maturity - its compassionate all-seeing worldliness, its grasp of the true nature of compromise etc etc. Even the way Eliot writes about business and money - it's very mature, somehow. Nothing 'literary' about it, even though the book is great literature.
Waffle waffle. But I still know what she means!!!! In fact I remembered that phrase from reading the CR years ago, because I liked it then.
I think she's a wonderful critic and I love your essay (as always).
Yes I like that --- and I suppose it is about being married rather than the courtship, etc. Thanks! I have a plane journey coming up and your biog of AC is packed, can't wait.
When I read the productions of the post modernists, I often think of Johnson and Woolf. And Ozymandias.
Say more...
The test of time. The fin above the wave. The Pastons. The DUNCIAD. Milton’s Satan before his hissing Congress. Johnson and Woolf waft through my mind as I consider the world. Not relative truth but solid thought.
oh agree with you there
Found your piece fascinating, and a real prompt to read the collection. But my personal highlight was your reminder of the 100th anniversary of Carry On Jeeves, which I fear may not have been your primary point!
haha no but it’s a nice side effect!
I am so pleased to see the appropriate praise heaped on Johnson here. Woolf's criticism I do not know, so I have reserved them, the two Common Reader volumes from the local Library, where they were languishing in the reserve stock in Lowestoft somewhere! At least, somewhat to my surprise, they were still there...
Great literary critics tend not to be academics, or are on the margins of the academy, such as Empson (who in his early books is a humane and constantly illuminating critic), or not in universities at all, such as Edmund Wilson, Coleridge, or T S Eliot. Then there is F R Leavis, of course...
oh you are in for a treat!
I started the Common Reader less than a year ago and couldn’t remember why I stopped. Picking it up today, I see the bookmark in the middle of the Montaigne essay—I stopped so I could go read Montaigne instead!
That is her genius she sends us to the books
I think they would have liked each other too!
Hey, thanks for this piece.
You are so right. The Common Reader is wonderful to read in so many ways, and for so many things (a surfeit of so going down here, but hey…). I think it’s her clarity that defines her here and there is something perhaps not of the antidote (although I get what you mean in your final para) but of the exemplar to us all; although, it rather an exacting example before which it is very easy to fall very short (as your points show).
And, thanks for the link to your Liberties piece, which I’ll read later.
I’m inspired to read The Common Reader, and to reacquaint myself with Johnson. We need the passage of time to see clearly and decipher changes. Thank you!
i was just reading the common reader!!!! i had no idea it was a centenary!!!
Feels fresh enough to have been written yesterday
I am so glad to see more attention paid to the hard working woman who did so much more than only write literary novels despite 5 decades of devastating bouts of mental illness.
Virginia Woolf was a politically savvy publisher and editor who made sales calls, a self-educated Intellectual who taught night-school for working women, a journalist who was published in a wide variety of journals — so much more than the elitist writer who was so fragile she only could spend time with a small circle of Bloomsbury writers and artists.
Reading your Woolf praise, I wondered why she had never been translated into Soviet Russia. I didn't know about her existence until I moved to the West. And I fell in love with her novels and read about her life, but not the Common Reader. Thank you.
She writes interestingly about Russian novels, which were newly translated into English in her lifetime. You will enjoy her essays I think.
Thank you! It is very interesting for me to read her essays. You right.
I've enjoyed Woolf because she writes so well, her judgment is sharp, and she's done the wide reading that supports her opinions. Writers today haven't read enough
yes she might be the most well read person in English letters
Absolutely wonderful. Thank you! I sort of know what she means about Middlemarch... you're right, it's wrong, but I know what she means.
Thank you :) please explain it to me because I do not understand it!
Well... I'm sure somebody else can do so far better... To me it's an instinctive (rather than analytically water-tight) response to the novel's maturity - its compassionate all-seeing worldliness, its grasp of the true nature of compromise etc etc. Even the way Eliot writes about business and money - it's very mature, somehow. Nothing 'literary' about it, even though the book is great literature.
Waffle waffle. But I still know what she means!!!! In fact I remembered that phrase from reading the CR years ago, because I liked it then.
I think she's a wonderful critic and I love your essay (as always).
Yes I like that --- and I suppose it is about being married rather than the courtship, etc. Thanks! I have a plane journey coming up and your biog of AC is packed, can't wait.
Yes!!! And I mean Mary Garth… what a character.
How lovely that you have Agatha, thank you!
I love Mary. She’s second only to Helen Burns
👌
Fascinating! Have not considered the similarities between Woolf and Johnson. Thank you! - will read with relish.
splendid!
four eyed geek