Blogging Woolf

Everywhere I go, I hear it — that hacking cough that people just cannot seem to get rid of this fall.

So how fitting that this week, the Financial Times published a review of Virginia Woolf’s 1930 volume On Being Ill.

As the story goes, Woolf fainted at a party in 1925. During the aftermath, which involved several months of recuperation, she wrote a thoughtful rumination on how illness changes one’s experience of the world.

Those thoughts were published by the Hogarth Press in a slim volume with cover art designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell. It was titled On Being Ill.

The Financial Times review mentions a new edition of the volume, published by Paris Press and with an introduction by Hermione Lee. It is a facsimile of the original, cover art and all.

Five years ago, in 2003, Lee presented the keynote address at the 13th Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference on the essay. The theme that year was “Woolf in the Real World.” Nothing is more real than illness.

The Paris Press edition is not that new. My volume, which I picked up several years ago at my local Borders, has a copyright date of 2002.

Perhaps you can pick up a copy for an ill friend. It just might change his or her experience of the world.