Dr Andrew Palmer turns to the novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) for some thoughts on how illness can transform our perceptions.

Woolf wrote ten novels – most famously, Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927); she was also a prolific writer of nonfiction, including the essay Dr Palmer discusses here: On Being Ill (1926). 

Dr Andrew Palmer is a Principal Lecturer in Modern Literature in the School of Humanities.