On Being IllAlways to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable. Virginia Woolfs essay begins by lamenting the surprise neglect of ill health as a potential literary subject. What then unfolds is a dazzlingly written series of reflections on sickness, fiction, and the chilling indifference of the natural world. Above all a testament to the fundamental solitariness of the human soul, this is an indispensable work by the