Wood's "common reader"

[alice wellintown]

> Yeah, "common reader"...we can look it up but the way I learned of it was via Virginia
> Woolf......so, I guess Wood goes back to there...

The "common reader" emerges when the supply of paper and printing meet
the demand of ever greater literarcy; long before Woolf. The rise of
journalism, non-fiction, the novel and the common reader all come
together.

In America, it is Whitman and Emerson who use the phrase with
democratic enthusiasm, but the term is common in England when Swift is
writing.