Marrin's Bookshop

Item Description

FIRST US EDITION. 8vo. 8.75 x 6 inches. 332 pp. Bound in original red cloth, gilt, blind stamped borders enclosing the device on front board. Rough cut fore edge. A little wear to extremities, including head and tail of spine, which is sunned. Some scattered foxing largely confined to edges and preliminaries. 1928 inscription on first free endpaper. Decorated by publisher's device on title page and by head and tailpiece vignettes. First US edition of the first series of essays by Virginia Woolf published as The Common Reader in 1925. Over twenty literary essays written in language that could be readily understood by the average reader. The topics covered include The Pastons and Chaucer, the Elizabethan play, the Duchess of Newcastle, Evelyn, Defoe, Addington, Jane Austen and the Brontes, George Eliot, Miss Mitford and The Russian Point of View.