The Common Reader

Name: The Common Reader
ISBN: 9787532789290

Virginia Woolf / 瞿世镜Shanghai Translation Publishing House · ChinaDec 2022

4.2

Word count: 156K words
Chapters: 23
ISBN: 9787532789290

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Summary

Virginia Woolf was not only a consummate novelist but also a critic with an unerring eye. This volume gathers her finest literary criticism, drawing on both series of The Common Reader and other collections. In these twenty sparkling essays she considers Austen, Conrad, Hardy, Lawrence, Forster and other major writers with penetrating insight, her prose alive throughout with wit and wisdom and rich in suggestion.

Includes a long essay by the translator, Qu Shijing, on Virginia Woolf's theory of the novel.

Editor's review

The Common Reader reveals another side of Woolf's pen. Writing on Austen, Conrad, Hardy, Lawrence and Forster, she assumes no academic airs; she enters the texts with a common reader's curiosity and acuity, noting both their texture and their limits while preserving the pleasure of reading. Her sharpness never turns cruel, her wit never frivolous, and between the lines lies the ease of a critic who writes as an essayist. Qu Shijing's translation is dependable, and the appended essay, Virginia Woolf's Theory of the Novel, provides a framework for understanding her critical outlook. This book rewards revisiting after finishing a novelist's original work, to watch Woolf take narrative apart and catch its style; it also suits casual reading as literary essays, for the charm of the critical prose itself. For writers, it is a model lesson in how to read honestly.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who admire Woolf's fiction and want to know her criticism
General readers interested in British novelists and literary essays
Chinese literature students and writers seeking models of critical writing
Book club members who want to expand their reading lists by author

Not a good fit for

Academic researchers expecting a systematic textbook of literary theory
Readers unfamiliar with the writers discussed who want only plot summaries

Reading tips

Start with essays on writers you know, then move to unfamiliar ones to lower the barrier
Reread Woolf's essay after finishing each original work, comparing it with your own impressions
Save the appended essay for last and use its framework to look back over the twenty pieces
Mark the grounds on which she judges a work good or bad to build a critical vocabulary

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

版权信息
译本序
普通读者
论笛福
论简·奥斯丁
论现代小说
《简·爱》与《呼啸山庄》
论乔治·爱略特
俄国人的观点
论约瑟夫·康拉德
《鲁滨孙飘流记》
伯爵的侄女
论乔治·梅瑞狄斯的小说
论托马斯·哈代的小说
论戴·赫·劳伦斯
论爱·摩·福斯特的小说
论美国小说
论心理小说家
对于现代文学的印象
狭窄的艺术之桥
评《小说解剖学》
小说的艺术
附录弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫的小说理论

FAQ

Is this book Woolf's fiction or a collection of criticism?

It is a selection of literary criticism, drawing on both series of The Common Reader and other collections—twenty essays in all, on Austen, Conrad, Hardy, Lawrence, Forster and others. It is not fiction.

Is Qu Shijing's appended essay worth reading?

The appended essay, Virginia Woolf's Theory of the Novel, systematically sets out her critical ideas. Read it after the main text; it helps draw the separate pieces into a coherent whole.

Do general readers need to read the original works first?

Not all of them. Woolf's essays stand on their own, but reading the original first makes her acuity in catching style and limitation more apparent.

Comments

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About the author

Virginia Woolf Author · British · 1882–1941

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was a British modernist writer born in London; her original name was Adeline Virginia Stephen. She reshaped the novel through stream-of-consciousness narration, presenting everyday experience through characters' inner monologues and flowing sensations in a delicate, rhythmic prose. Her major works include Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and The Waves. Orlando imagines a life across eras and genders, while To the Lighthouse reflects memory and loss through family and time. She also wrote the feminist classic A Room of One's Own and essays such as If Shakespeare Had a Sister, centering on women and the conditions of writing. Forty-one of her works are included here under foreign literature and essays. She drowned herself in 1941.

瞿世镜 Author

Qu Shijing is an important Chinese scholar known for translating and studying Virginia Woolf; public information about his life is limited, yet his scholarly interests can still be clearly seen in his translations and writings. He has long focused on foreign literature, especially stream-of-consciousness fiction. He translated Woolf's major works, including A Room of One's Own, To the Lighthouse, and The Common Reader, and took part in translating the Collected Works of Virginia Woolf, making Woolf's writing fully accessible to Chinese readers. Beyond translation, he wrote Virginia Woolf, the Stream-of-Consciousness Novelist, analyzing her artistic world through both her narrative techniques and her intellectual context. His translations strive to capture the tone of the originals, and he has exercised influence in literary appreciation and foreign literature, offering Chinese readers a reliable path into modernist fiction.