Orlando: A Biography [Paperback]

Virginia Woolf (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest Book, Hb 266 | Publication Date: October 24, 1973

In her most exuberant, most fanciful novel, Woolf has created a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex. Born in the Elizabethan Age to wealth and position, Orlando is a young nobleman at the beginning of the story-and a modern woman three centuries later. “A poetic masterpiece of the first rank” (Rebecca West). The source of a critically acclaimed 1993 feature film directed by Sally Potter. Index; illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1928, way before everyone else was talking about gender-bending and way, way before the terrific movie with Tilda Swinton, Virginia Woolf wrote her comic masterpiece, a fantastic, fanciful love letter disguised as a biography, to Vita Sackville-West. Orlando enters the book as an Elizabethan nobleman and leaves the book three centuries and one change of gender later as a liberated woman of the 1920s. Along the way this most rambunctious of Woolf's characters engages in sword fights, trades barbs with 18th century wits, has a baby, and drives a car. This is a deliriously written, breathless-making book and a classic both of lesbian literature and the Western canon.

Review

In 1928, way before everyone else was talking about gender-bending and way, way before the terrific movie with Tilda Swinton, Virginia Woolf wrote her comic masterpiece, a fantastic, fanciful love letter disguised as a biography, to Vita Sackville-West. Orlando enters the book as an Elizabethan nobleman and leaves the book three centuries and one change of gender later as a liberated woman of the 1920s. Along the way this most rambunctious of Woolf's characters engages in sword fights, trades barbs with 18th century wits, has a baby, and drives a car. This is a deliriously written, breathless-making book and a classic both of lesbian literature and the Western canon.
(Amazon.com Review )

'Together these ten volumes make an attractive and reasonably priced (the volumes vary between L3.99 and L4.99) working edition of Virginia Woolf's best-known writing. One can only hope that their success will prompt World's Classics to add her other essays to the series in due course.' Elisabeth Jay, Westminster College, Oxford, Review of English Studies, Volume XLV, No. 178, May '94 (Elisabeth Jay, Westminster College, Oxford )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 333 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1st Edition edition (October 24, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015670160X
• ISBN-13: 978-0156701600
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs > Transgender

More About the Author

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gender-bending saga of three centuries, December 29, 2003

By 

A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orlando: A Biography (Paperback)

"Orlando" is a fictional biography whose subject in the beginning is a sixteen-year-old boy in the Elizabethan era and in the end -- three hundred years later -- is a thirty-six-year-old woman. This is not a novel about transsexuality, as such a premise would indicate, but it is a statement about sexual identity and gender roles in English society as only an author like Virginia Woolf could make, territory not even the brazen D.H. Lawrence could traverse with much confidence. It is a lyrical tour de force in which Woolf displays her considerable talent for subtly describing moods and scenery, but most surprisingly, it demonstrates her sly sense of humor and satire.

Orlando's gender alteration is naturally the central event of his preternaturally long life, but his aging only twenty years over a course of three centuries is certainly no less bizarre. To describe the circumstances under which he becomes a woman or explain the logic by which he ages so slowly would be giving away too much in this review, nor would it really help to recommend the novel to one who is not yet persuaded to read it, so I will be silent on that account, saying only that these outrageous devices fully succeed as vehicles to explore Woolf's theme of femininity with respect to English cultural and historical frames of reference.

The novel examines the effect of gender alteration on Orlando's amorous and professional capacities. As a young nobleman in the Elizabethan court whose interests are swordsmanship and poetry, he is engaged to an aristocratic Irish girl, has a torrid affair with a Russian princess, and meets a silly woman who, resembling nothing so much as a hare, calls herself the Archduchess Harriet. After serving as an ambassador in Turkey, Orlando becomes a woman, joins a band of gypsies, and returns to England where he (she) must handle the legalities regarding his dukeship because of his new gender. As a woman, he manages to gain the romantic attentions of famous writers like Pope, Dryden, and Swift before eventually marrying and having a son. Some surprises ensue, but let it suffice to say that Orlando is not the only androgynous character in the novel.

An underlying, and highly controversial, implication is that every human being harbors aspects of both genders, mainly psychological, but Woolf goes so far as to make them physical in order to press the point. Although the idea may seem tame now, "Orlando" may have set a precedent for cross-gender role-playing when it was first published in 1928. The novel is very much ahead of its time; it has a sort of nonchalant sophistication that characterizes the type of magical realism that was to become a large part of European-influenced literature throughout the rest of the twentieth century. My admiration for Virginia Woolf only increases with each novel of hers that I read, and "Orlando" is in my opinion the best yet.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking for something good to read? Check this one out..., November 17, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Orlando: A Biography (Paperback)

John Irving ("World According to Garp") wrote an essay on Charles Dickens book "Great Expectations" in which he said that that book was the first book he had ever read that he wished he had written. For me the first book that I had read that I wished I had written is "Orlando" by Virgina Woolf. It blew me away. I had seen the movie version a few years ago, and recently found it in a bookstore, so I decided to check it out. It's subtitle is "A Biography" and although it is based (very loosely, I'm sure) on someone's actual life, it becomes clear to the reader that this is definitely a work of fiction. The reason that I enjoyed it so much is, well, let me put it this way...Charles Dickens and John Irving were and are storytellers, very wonderful, brilliant storytellers, but Virgina Woolf is (well, was) an amazing artist. I don't go for poetry that much, I'm a prose kind of guy, but "Orlando" for me, was the very best kind of poetry but written as a narrative. Read this book. And let me know what you think...

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wild tromp through literary history, June 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Orlando: A Biography (Paperback)

Orlando is simply wonderful. In the novel, Woolf uses the character of Orlando, a person who lives through four centuries as man sometimes and woman sometimes. The term biography might throw you, since Orlando is no normal biography. Woolf personifies literary thought as a person (hence the timelessness and gender changing capability). She depicts Elizabethan times through the early twentieth century with wit and sarcasm. The more that you've read of English literature from Shakespeare forward the more you will catch the little jokes and the reason for why certain things happen. A very enjoyable read. The film version is not exactly the same, so I recommend sticking to the book.