The upcoming Woolf Salon on Friday, Dec. 5, will celebrate The Common Reader at 100, Virginia’s book-length work of literary criticism collecting 20 essays which she introduces with a short preface. You can log in via Zoom.

The first salon in July 2020 invited attendees to “imagine a Woolfian criticism.” More than five years later, the salon returns to Woolf’s critical essays and to questions about the difference Woolf’s reading and thinking—and her thinking about reading—might make for us here and now.

• Why might the concept “common reader” be of urgent concern in our Present Day?
• As you return to the essays gathered in the 1925 volume, what comes to mind?
• What do you notice about Woolf’s approach to literature as “common ground”?
• Does anything prompt you to wonder about your own reading practices? Your own framework(s) of criticism?
• What confuses you? What activates you? What in these pages do you relish?

Details

Background on the Salon

The Salon Conspirators — Ben Hagen, Shilo McGiff, Amy Smith, and Drew Shannon — began the Woolf Salon Project in July 2020 to provide opportunities for conversation and conviviality among Woolf-interested scholars, students, and common readers during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.