Wood's "common reader"

[Ian Livingston]

Okay, I admit it. It's me. I'm very common, and I read. I'm so ashamed.
(Slinks off stage right, gaze averted.)

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 7:39 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com
> wrote:

> > 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.
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds
the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in
reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness
groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest
urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
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