How Should One Read a Book?

<p>First delivered as a speech to schoolgirls in Kent in 1926 this enchanting short essay by the towering Modernist writer Virginia Woolf celebrates the importance of the written word.</p><p><br></p><p>With a measured but ardent tone Woolf weaves together thought and quote verse and prose into a moving tract on the power literature can have over its reader in a way which still resounds with truth today.</p><p><br></p><p>'<em>I have sometimes dreamt at least that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns their laurels their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms Look these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.'</em></p>