The Uncommon Reader is a delightful little comic fantasy about the benefits of a good book, but the wonder of it is just how true it rings.

Soon enough she is devouring all the literature she can get hold of, initially to the detriment of her public duties, but ultimately to the enrichment of her life and the betterment of her service to the nation. She hadn't previously taken much interest in reading for pleasure – it being in the nature of her job not to have hobbies – and had only been briefed, which is the antithesis of reading: terse and with an end to closing a subject, whereas 'reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting'. Common can also mean vulgar, as common taste mean, as common thief ordinary, as common folk widespread, as in 'common use' or something for use by everyone, as in 'common land'.While out walking the corgis one day, the Queen comes across a travelling library and, well practised at feigning interest in her subjects' lives, asks to borrow a book. A commoner is anyone other than royalty or nobility.

In British English, 'common' holds levels of connotation. Johnson: 'I rejoice to concur with the common reader for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claims to poetical honours.' Plus a triple play – Virginia Woolf's title came from Dr. The Common Reader is used by Virginia Woolf as the title work of her 1925 essay collection. It can also mean a set text, a book that everyone in a group (for example, all students entering a university) are expected to read, so that they can have something in common. This can mean a person who reads for pleasure, as opposed to a critic or scholar. The title is a play on the phrase 'common reader'. The story follows the consequences of this obsession for the Queen, her household and advisers, and her constitutional position. The title's 'uncommon reader' ( Queen Elizabeth II) becomes obsessed with books after a chance encounter with a mobile library. 5 (8 March 2007), it was published later the same year in book form by Faber & Faber and Profile Books.Īn audiobook version read by the author was released on CD in 2007. After appearing first in the London Review of Books, Vol. The Uncommon Reader is a novella by Alan Bennett.

The uncommon reader by alan bennett