The Common Reader: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Common Reader, credited to Virginia Woolf, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf. Read in English by LibriVox Volunteers A collection of essays by Virginia Woolf, some of which originally appeared in the Times Literary Supplement or the Dial, and others were originally published for the first time in this volume. "Anything that Virginia Woolf may have to say about letters is of more than ordinary interest, for her peculiar intelligence and informed attitude set her somewhat apart. She possesses the happy faculty simultaneously of enjoying and accepting the work of Daniel De Foe and James Joyce, of Joseph Addison and T.S. Eliot, of Jane Austen and Marcel Proust. Many of these essays are excellent examples of that type of writing which reveals the reactions, nuances, twisting and adventuring threads of thought and surmise which spring from the perusal and spiritual acquisition of other work." Excerpts from the New York Times Book Review of The Common Reader, May 31, 1925

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Common Reader
• Author credits: Virginia Woolf
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 27
• Listed recording duration: 9:57:38

Catalogue topics

• eliot
• essays
• austen
• defoe
• conrad
• commentary
• Woolf

Opening tracks: first 24 of 27

1. 01 - The Common Reader — 2:57
2. 02 - The Pastons and Chaucer — 54:11
3. 03 - On Not Knowing Greek — 41:26
4. 04 - The Elizabethan Lumber Room — 24:18
5. 05 - Notes on an Elizabethan Play — 29:06
6. 06 - Montaigne — 22:32
7. 07 - The Duchess of Newcastle — 22:42
8. 08 - Rambling Round Evelyn — 19:54
9. 09 - Defoe — 21:15
10. 10 - Addison — 29:41
11. 11 - The Lives of the Obscure — 2:07
12. 12 - I. The Taylors and the Edgeworths — 27:24
13. 13 - II. Laetitia Pilkington — 13:45
14. 14 - III. Miss Ormerod — 24:43
15. 15 - Jane Austen — 31:56
16. 16 - Modern Fiction — 18:55
17. 17 - 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' — 18:06
18. 18 - George Eliot — 28:25
19. 19 - The Russian Point of View — 27:44
20. 20 - Outlines - I. Miss Mitford — 18:49
21. 21 - Outlines. II. Dr. Bentley — 15:40
22. 22 - Outlines. III. Lady Dorothy Nevill — 12:52
23. 23 - Outlines. IV. Archbishop Thomson — 13:01
24. 24 - The Patron and the Crocus — 9:19

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.