A collection of essays, most first published in periodicals like the Times Literary Supplement and The Nation, in which Woolf writes about English writers and books from the Elizabethans through her own contemporaries, discussing figures such as Sidney, Donne, Defoe, Sterne, Swift, Chesterfield, De Quincey, Cowper, Hazlitt, the Brontes' circle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Gissing, George Meredith, Christina Rossetti, and Thomas Hardy, and closing with an essay on how one should read a book.
Books mentioned in The Common Reader: Second Series (43)
Arcadia by Philip Sidney: “Essay titled "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia"; Woolf writes at length on the romance, e.g. "In the Arcadia, as in some luminous globe, all the seeds of English fiction lie latent."”
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: “Whole essay titled "Robinson Crusoe" devoted to the novel.”
Letters (Dorothy Osborne) by Dorothy Osborne: “Essay titled "Dorothy Osborne's 'Letters'" discussing her correspondence at length.”
Journal to Stella by Jonathan Swift: “Essay titled "Swift's 'Journal to Stella'" discusses the work throughout.”
A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: “Essay on Sterne discusses "that narrative of a little tour in France which he called A Sentimental Journey."”
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: “Tristram Shandy, though it is Sterne's first novel, was written at a time when many have written their twentieth...”
Letters to His Son by Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield: “Essay titled "Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son" discusses the collection.”
Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Whole essay titled "'Aurora Leigh'" analyzing the verse-novel, e.g. "we cannot read the first twenty pages of Aurora Leigh..."”
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti: Discussed via Saintsbury's analysis: "examines Goblin Market, and reports that The metre of the principal poem..."
Holy Sonnets and Divine Poems by John Donne: “Thus, finally, we reach the last section of the book, the Holy Sonnets and Divine Poems.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: “Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, Richard Feverel all trod fast on each other's heels between the years 1847 and 1860.”
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray: “Listed alongside Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Richard Feverel as novels of the period.”
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens: “Listed alongside Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, Richard Feverel.”
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith: “Listed alongside Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield as "Richard Feverel."”
The Egoist by George Meredith: “The Egoist at once modifies our theory that Meredith is pre-eminently the master of great scenes.”
Demos by George Gissing: “...we feel that we are filling in a design which we began to trace out when we read Demos and New Grub Street and The Nether World.”
New Grub Street by George Gissing: “Named alongside Demos and The Nether World as novels Woolf discusses.”
The Nether World by George Gissing: “Named alongside Demos and New Grub Street as novels Woolf discusses.”
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy: “In the year 1871 he was a man of thirty-one; he had written a novel, Desperate Remedies, but he was by no means an assured craftsman.”
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy: “But the year after, when Under the Greenwood Tree appeared, it was clear that much of the effort of 'feeling for a method' had been overcome.”
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: “Grouped with The Woodlanders, The Return of the Native, and The Mayor of Casterbridge as key Hardy novels.”
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: “Grouped with Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, and The Mayor of Casterbridge.”
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: “There they hang in the mind the shapes of the books we have read...Robinson Crusoe, Emma, The Return of the Native.”
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: “...and above all, in The Mayor of Casterbridge, we have Hardy's impression of life as it came to him without conscious ordering.”
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: “Thus when Jude the Obscure appears or a new volume of Proust, the newspapers are flooded with protests.”
Emma by Jane Austen: “There they hang in the mind the shapes of the books we have read solidified by the judgments we have passed on them--Robinson Crusoe, Emma, The Return of the Native.”
John Gilpin by William Cowper: “...told him, just as he was sinking into one of his fits of melancholy, the story of John Gilpin, so that he leapt out of bed, shaking with laughter.”
The Task by William Cowper: “It is this that makes passages in The Task like clear windows let into the prosaic fabric of the rest.”
Love for Love by William Congreve: “The famous passages about reading Love for Love and drinking coffee from a silver pot, and reading La Nouvelle Heloise and eating a cold chicken, are known to all...”
Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “...and reading La Nouvelle Heloise and eating a cold chicken, are known to all...”
Paradise Lost by John Milton: “...and it is as impossible to imagine that a Duke could be a great novelist as that Paradise Lost could be written by a man behind a counter.”
Rasselas by Samuel Johnson: “Directly she read Rasselas, enlarged and swollen sentences formed on the tip of her childish pen in the manner of Dr.”
The Angel in the House by Coventry Patmore: “Coventry Patmore's 'Angel in the House' and Clough's 'Bothie' were both attempts of the same kind and preceded Aurora Leigh by some years.”
The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich by Arthur Hugh Clough: “Named alongside Patmore's "Angel in the House" as a precursor to Aurora Leigh.”
The Prelude by William Wordsworth: “...this must be compared with Lear, with Phedre, with The Prelude; or if not with these, with whatever is the best or seems to us to be the best in its own kind.”
Phèdre by Jean Racine: “...this must be compared with Lear, with Phedre, with The Prelude...”
King Lear by William Shakespeare: “"Listen, it will say, what shall we call this? And it will read us perhaps Lear and then perhaps the Agamemnon..." and again "this must be compared with Lear, with Phedre, with The Prelude."”
Agamemnon by Aeschylus: “...it will read us perhaps Lear and then perhaps the Agamemnon in order to bring out that common quality.”
Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster: “...[Forster in his Aspects of the Novel] is not the great name he was twenty years ago.”
Life of Christina Rossetti by Mary F. Sandars: “No sooner have we opened the pages of Miss Sandars's careful and competent book (Life of Christina Rossetti, by Mary F...”
Euphues by John Lyly: “Some of Spenser might have been on his shelves; and Sidney's Arcadia; and the Paradise of Dainty Devices, and Lyly's Euphues.”
The Paradise of Dainty Devices by Richard Edwards: “Some of Spenser might have been on his shelves; and Sidney's Arcadia; and the Paradise of Dainty Devices, and Lyly's Euphues.”