Books: Words in Pain. Letters on Life and Death: Death on her Own Terms

摘要

Olga Jacoby. Edited by Jocelyn Catty, Trevor Moore Skyscraper Publications , 2018 , HB, 254 pp, ￡15.00 , 978-1911072355The Conway Hall library is within the headquarters of the Ethical Society; Conway Hall being the oldest free thought organisation in the world. Trevor Moore, one of the editors of Words in Pain came across this book in the library, a collection of letters written between 1909 and 1913 by Olga Jacoby, a woman dying of an unspecified illness, who records in her letters her fear of a long drawn-out death, her decision to adopt four children — an unregulated activity at that time — and her rejection of any formal religious belief, feeling that religion gave insufficient credit to the achievements of science. She writes: ‘… Science is turning …