On Being Ill

by Virginia Woolf

Overview

2022 Reprint of the 1926 edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "On Being Ill" is an essay by Virginia Woolf that appeared in T. S. Eliot's "The New Criterion" in January 1926. The essay sought to establish illness as a serious subject of literature along the lines of love, jealousy and battle. Woolf writes, "Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light...it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no; ... literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear." Woolf explores the taboos associated with illness, and she discusses how illness transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684227280
Publisher:	Martino Fine Books
Publication date:	07/19/2022
Pages:	20
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.05(d)

About the Author

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was one of the boldest and most influential writers of the English Modernist movement. Among her major works are the novels Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves.

Date of Birth:

January 25, 1882

Date of Death:

March 28, 1941

Place of Birth:

London

Place of Death:

Sussex, England

Education:

Home schooling

Editorial Reviews

The first sentence of this essay, which was originally published in T. S. Eliot's New Criterion, in 1926, includes references to both the consolations of angels and the indignities of the dentist's chair, and this almost gleeful waywardness is characteristic of what's to come. By turns lyrical, self-mocking, and outlandish, Woolf's meditation on the perils and privileges of the sickbed lampoons the loneliness that makes one "glad of a kick from a housemaid" and extolls the merits of bad literature for the unwell. As Hermione Lee points out in her excellent introduction, the author only hints here at the mental and physical illnesses that plagued her throughout her life, but one's knowledge of them gives the references to "waters of annihilation" and "deserts of the soul" an added resonance. And yet the consolations of creation are also considered. When Woolf imagines beauty in a frozen-over garden, even after the death of the sun -- "There, thrusting its head up undaunted in the starlight, the rose will flower, the crocus will burn" -- it seems less a triumph of nature than of art.

The New Yorker

“The essay has the virtue of suggesting an origin for [Virginia Woolf’s] impassioned, circumnavigatory style: her racing, feverish mind.” THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“I’d assign my students to read, ten times daily, the first sentence of Virginia Woolf’s brilliant and beautiful essay On Being Ill – until they learned to appreciate the full potential, the dazzling glory, and the clarity of the complex sentence…. [D]elicate but powerful… an effecting, resonant recapitulation and illustration of the inadequacy and superfluity of language in our efforts to describe human suffering.” Francine Prose, BOOK FORUM

“A most unusual and long-neglected reverie on illness, language and poetry – reprinted by the sterling Paris Press…. Woolf lets her consciousness roam over the unpredictable terrain of sickness – the sick body, the sick mind – and how difficult it is for us to find words to describe this altered state. This is a brilliant and odd book, charged with restrained emotion and sudden humor.” LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“Examining her own familiarity with illness, Woolf undertakes a rigorous, compassionate, and droll investigation of how illness shapes the identity of a sick patient, particularly the invalid, not only affecting his or her perceptions of the world but also awakening the helplessness of being unable to convey those perceptions, or the effects of illness, to other. […] Because of its enduring relevance, On Being Ill is a necessary and compelling read. The slender and striking hardbound edition from Paris Press gives an old text new life.” YALE JOURNAL FOR HUMANITIES IN MEDICINE

“ ‘On Being Ill’ is one of those peculiarly fascinating essays that Woolf wrote which defy categorization: part mediation, part autobiography and part critical analysis; it refuses to be pigeon-holed. […] I have no hesitation in recommending this new edition…. Paris Press is a non-profit organization and is to be congratulated on this splendid publication. If you do not already have this essay in your collection, this is a must.” VIRGINIA WOOLF BULLETIN

“This new and beautiful reprinting by Paris Press, a small nonprofit house in Massachusetts, replicates design elements of the Hogarth edition, including Vanessa Bell’s cover art. It also contains a superb introduction by literary scholar and biographer Hermione Lee, who considers ‘On Being Ill’ one of Woolf’s ‘most daring, strange, and original essays.’ ” JOURNAL OF CANADIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

From the Publisher