| Virginia Woolf was yet another brilliant name after the long chain of female writers in English literature including Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot. She is credited with being one of the initial writers of stream-of-consciousness novels, a discerning literary critic, a stylistic essayist, a major short story writer, and a remarkable biographer. But for a long time, critics and scholars have paid more attention to her novels, studying the various elements in her novels from all kinds of perspectives, while her essays seem not to have been adequately investigated. Actually, there are scholars who complain that even her novels do not lay emphasis on the plot. This is perhaps true. But we should note that Virginia Woolf was first of all an essayist. She embarked on her literary career by trying her hand at literary reviews and remarks. Early in the year of 1905, she began to write critical essays for The Times Literary Supplement and other periodicals. Altogether, her critical essays reached a sum of more than five hundred, some of which were later included in The Common Reader (1925) and The Second Common Reader (1932). In those essays, she showed the inner thought of her characters and depicted it meticulously. The writing experience undoubtedly laid a solid foundation for her later novel writing.It is generally believed that the two series of The Common Reader constituted her most important achievement in critical essays. In her analysis of some thirty most prominent writers and their works, she demonstrated profound and provocative thoughts on some most important literary issues. This is well worth studying. The present thesis attempts an analysis of Woolf's literary thoughts as displayed in The Common Reader (two series). The main body of the essay consists of three parts:a study of the question of Virginia Woolf's professed status as the common reader, an analysis of her literary thoughts in "How Should One Read a Book?" and in "Modern Fiction.'...
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