Biographies “show us people going about their daily affairs, toiling, failing, succeeding, eating, hating, loving, until they die” (Woolf, The Second Common Reader 261). Biographies should consume their reader with “curiosity about the lives of these people – the servants gossiping, the gentlemen dining, the girl dressing for a party, the old woman at the window with her knitting” and answer the questions: “Who are they, what are they, and what are their names, their occupations, their thoughts, and adventures?” (Woolf, Second Common Reader 261). These words, from Virginia Woolf’s 1926 essay “How Should One Read A Book?,” clearly state her biographical theories found in her two Common Reader essay collections. Woolf was supremely interested in people, and her biographical essays reflect this interest. Missing are the generalizations about the times when her subjects lived, and in their place are stories that reveal her subject to her reader. Each Common Reader collection contains essays of various types – including literary criticism, biography, and cultural analysis. However, despite being about different subjects, each essay returns to the person and what makes up the self.
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