New Menard Press Marks Centennial of Virginia Woolf's "On Being Ill" with New Edition and Contemporary Essays
A new edition from New Menard Press commemorates the centennial of Virginia Woolf's essay "On Being Ill," originally published in 1926. This edition includes essays from twelve modern authors reflecting on the theme of illness. Woolf's essay, which first appeared in T. S. Eliot's New Criterion and was later titled "Illness: An Unexploited Mine" in The Forum, critiques the poor literary portrayal of sickness. Among the contributors are Lina Scheynius and contemporary voices like Garth Greenwell and Anne Boyer, referencing works such as Christine Smallwood's "The Life of the Mind" (2021) and Lena Dunham's "Famesick," while also drawing inspiration from earlier writers like D. H. Lawrence and Alphonse Daudet.
Key facts
- Virginia Woolf's essay "On Being Ill" was first published in 1926 in T. S. Eliot's New Criterion magazine.
- The essay was reprinted three months later in The Forum under the title "Illness: An Unexploited Mine."
- New Menard Press has released a centennial edition of "On Being Ill" with essays from twelve contemporary writers.
- Woolf's essay questions why illness is rarely and inadequately represented in literature.
- D. H. Lawrence's novels "Sons and Lovers" (1913) and "Women in Love" (1920) featured illness prominently before Woolf's essay.
- Alphonse Daudet's "In the Land of Pain" describes his experience with tabes dorsalis, a complication of syphilis.
- Contemporary works like Christine Smallwood's "The Life of the Mind" (2021) and Garth Greenwell's "Small Rain" (2024) graphically depict bodily illness.
- Anne Boyer's memoir "The Undying" examines illness within political and material contexts.
Entities
Artists
- Virginia Woolf
- T. S. Eliot
- D. H. Lawrence
- Frieda Weekley
- Louie Burrows
- Marcel Proust
- Thomas De Quincey
- James Joyce
- Ernest Hemingway
- Christine Smallwood
- Lena Dunham
- Philip Roth
- Leo Tolstoy
- Alphonse Daudet
- Elaine Scarry
- Lina Scheynius
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Garth Greenwell
- Katherine Anne Porter
- Thomas Mann
- Susan Sontag
- Anne Boyer
- Albert Camus
- José Saramago
Institutions
- New Menard Press
- New Criterion
- The Forum
Locations
- Oran
- Algeria