Author(s): Virginia Woolf et al

Essay | Medicine | Literature

On Being Ill is a valuable book for everybody who wants to connect with illness through art and literature, and look at it from a different perspective. 

Contributions from contemporary writers are bookended by Virginia Woolf's essay, 'On being ill' and Audre Lorde's 'An Introduction to the Cancer Journals'.

The subtle complexities of Virginia Woolf's essay 'On Being Ill' will no doubt continue to be resonant for a new generation of readers today. Certainly for both Woolf and Plath, the politics of illness are never far away.

"Illness", Woolf writes. "makes us disinclined fpr the long campaigns that prose extracts". 
Woolf asks herself in her essay if illness should not receive more attention in literature, taking its place alongside the recurring themes of "love, battle and jealousy". This book, On Being Ill, does exactly that. 

Contributors: Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, Dern Rees-Jones, Lieke Marsman, Lucia Osborne-Crowley, Mieke van Zonnerveld, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Nadia de Vries, Jameisha Prescod, Sinead Gleeson.

Translation: Sophie Collins