Here is the way Virginia Woolf opens her book, called The Common Reader, which is her 1925 book reprinting essays about literature which she had written and published in various newspapers of the time, writing in fact, as a "common reader" herself. She writes in her introduction this self-ironic proclamation of the limitations and yet aims of such reading:

There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson's Life of Gray which might well be written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private people. ". . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honors." It defines their qualities; it dignifies their aims; it bestows upon a pursuit which devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing very substantial, the sanction of a great man's approval.

The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole--a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing. He never ceases, as he reads, to run up some rickety and ramshakel fabric which shall give him the temporary satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of affection, laughter, and argument. Hasty, inaccurate, and superficial, snatching now this poem, now that scrap of old furniture without caring where he finds it or of what nature it may be so long as it serves his purpose and rounds his structure, his deficiencies as a critic are too obvious to be pointed out; but if he has, as Dr. Johnson maintained, some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a result. (Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader: First Series, Harcourt Brace & World, 1925, 1953, 1-2) (etext online: <http://orlando.jp.org/VWWARC/DAT/cmreader.html> )

• Here is the New York Times reprint online of their 1925 review of her book. "Virginia Woolf in Praise of the Common Reader He is Neither Scholar Nor Critic, But She Is Both," (May 31, 1925) (Accessed April 7, 2002) <http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/08/reviews/woolf-common.html> . It is definitely worth reading as well.