WOOLF, Virginia.
On Being Ill.
London: Printed and published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press , 1930.
$11,000.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-151223
+$450
Signed Limited Edition of Virginia Woolf's On Being Ill; In the Rare Original Dust Jacket In Exceptional Condition
Signed limited edition and first edition in book form of this meditation on the literary possibilities of illness. One of 250 numbered copies signed by Virginia Woolf in her characteristic purple ink on the limitation page, this is number 104. Octavo, original half vellum over green silk boards, marbled endpapers. Fine in the rare original dust jacket which is in exceptional condition. Easily the nicest example we have seen.
Woolf's essay advances the idea that illness is as worthy a topic of literary attention as more traditional ones like war, love and lust: "novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no; … literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear." Woolf wrote this essay while convalescing in bed following a bout with exhaustion. During its composition she was leading what she called an "amphibious" life: half in, half out of bed. She also set the type for this book herself. First published in the Criterion in January, 1926; the text has been slightly revised for this edition. Kirkpatrick A14. Woolmer 248.
On Being Ill.
$11,000.00
In Stock
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