Virginia Woolf's article "On Being Ill" is paired with her mother's guide to amateur nursing, "Notes From Sick Rooms." Hermione Lee and Mark Hussey provide wonderful accompanying essays on the context in which these pieces were written and the interesting ways in which reading them together assists in understanding Woolf, Stephen, and illness. I loved the writing in Woolf's "On Being Ill" (I had to pause every paragraph just to savor the words) and found Stephen's guide to be a lovely historical artifact. Both Stephen and Woolf view the ill as being very sensitive to sensation and imagination, but Stephen is more focused on how to make them comfortable, while it seems that Woolf posits the impossibility of understanding or truly commiserating with the ill, and so concentrates instead on how it feels to be ill and therefore solitary and alienated. ( )

In the new edition of Virginia Woolf's On Being Ill, available from Paris Press, editors have printed On Being Ill alongside her mother Julia Stephen's nonfiction work, Notes from Sick Rooms, along with thoughtful introductions to both works, as well as an afterword from Rita Charon, one of the leading figures in the relatively new discipline of Narrative Medicine. While any of the works might be well worth reading on their own, this new edition showcases the material in such a way as to highlight different treatments and thoughts on being ill from the specific (and often contradictory) perspectives of a nurse and her patient. For readers interested in Woolf's life, Julia Stephen's work is an invaluable eye into what her sick room must have been like as she was cared for by her mother, and for readers interested in history, the second and longer work by Stephens will be of just as much interest. While Woolf's work is shorter, it is also a startlingly beautiful look into what it means to live with illness, and how this time can manifest itself as both a blessing and a horror.

All in all, the essays in this work make for a short read, but it is also a packed read that begs for further examination, and ends up being well worth the time. Recommended for all those interested in either text, or in the experience of illness at home in the early twentieth century. And, probably, recommended for anyone engaged in caring for loved ones or in nursing practices--certainly, much of what Stephen writes on remedies and food is predictably outdated...but her careful attention to detail and desire mean that many of her concerns are indeed still relevant today. ( )