On Being Ill
With Notes from Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen
Virginia Woolf asks why illness, as common as love or war, has so rarely been a subject for literature, and what it does to the mind.
First published in 1926, Virginia Woolf’s essay argues that illness deserves a place in literature alongside love, jealousy and battle, and notes how poor English is at describing pain. She writes about the isolation and vulnerability that sickness brings and the new ways of seeing it can open. This edition pairs it with Notes from Sick Rooms, a short guide to nursing by her mother, Julia Stephen, so the patient’s view and the carer’s sit side by side.
Recommended by 1 Person
Meghan O’Rourke
Woolf is the master of writing about inner sensation. In this book-length essay, she pointedly notes that we have very little good writing about pain, and lays out the "poverty" of the English language when it comes to describing the body. We can't see what we don't have words for.
Article · December 2022
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