[1] The title's "uncommon reader" (Queen Elizabeth II) becomes obsessed with books after a chance encounter with a mobile library.

The story follows the consequences of this obsession for the Queen, her household and advisers, and her constitutional position.

The Common Reader is used by Virginia Woolf as the title work of her 1925 essay collection.

Plus a triple play – Virginia Woolf's title came from Dr. 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."

Several authors, books, biography subjects, and poems are mentioned in the novella including: