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Virginia Woolf

Orlando: A Biography Paperback – October 24, 1973

by Virginia Woolf (Author)

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“Come, come! I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”

As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate sixteen-year-old nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colorful delights of Queen Elizabeth I’s court. By the close, three centuries have passed, and he will have transformed into a thirty-six-year-old woman in the year 1928. Orlando’s journey is also an internal one—he is an impulsive poet who learns patience in matter of the heart, and a woman who knows what it is to be a man.

Virginia Woolf’s most unusual creation, Orlando is a fantastical biography as well as a funny, exuberant romp through history that examines the true nature of sexuality.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Mariner Books
Publication date

October 24, 1973
Dimensions

8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
ISBN-10

015670160X
ISBN-13

978-0156701600
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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

"As a work of political satire and feminist fantasy, Orlando laid the groundwork for today’s cultural landscape, in which the boundaries of both gender and literary genre are more porous than ever . . . If published today, Orlando might have been misshelved not as biography but as fantasy or science fiction — genres in which women writers in recent years have increasingly found the space to challenge the straight-white-male strictures of both realist fiction and reality itself. Orlando’s blend of social critique and bold fantasy echoes in the postwar fiction of Ursula Le Guin and Angela Carter, and more recently in the fairy-tale retellings of Helen Oyeyemi and Daniel Mallory Ortberg — as well as in novels like Melissa Broder’s The Pisces." —Vulture, "Orlando is the Virginia Woolf Novel We Need Right Now"

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; First edition (October 24, 1973)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 015670160X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0156701600
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #24,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Renaissance Historical Fiction (Books)
- #10 in Renaissance Literary Criticism (Books)
- #84 in Biographical Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
843 ratings

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Virginia Woolf

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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.

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Sebastian ZavalaTop Contributor: Star Wars

One for the ages

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2019

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Being English my second language, I had a little difficulty reading Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando'. Nevertheless, having seen both the movie and the Peruvian stage play, I didn't have any trouble understanding the plot. I think the problem was in the details --but it wasn't serious. In any case, I do consider this novel --or pseudo biography-- to be a masterpiece, a book that, despite being more than a hundred years old, has a lot to say about gender roles and class differences that should resonate with contemporary readers. Addictive, intriguing and undeniably weird, 'Orlando' is one for the ages. Truly memorable.

7 people found this helpful

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Fyrecurl

A Nineteenth Century Transsexual Adventure

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2013

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The most brilliant portrayal of a transsexual experience in modern history. Even when Magnus Hirshfield was publishing his treatise on the transsexual phenomenah, Woolf relates an account of the intracies of gender identity undiscovered by social scientists and biologists. Published in 1928, Orlando has been billed as one of Woolf's best imaginative works however, such criticism was never seen in the light of reality but a surreal depiction of the writer's portrayal of a young man who wakes up one day as a woman, as if in the ordinary course of his life. As Woolf suggests of her character's reaction to the change "Orlando herself showed no surprise at it.(Woolf, 139. Modern transsexuals have explained only recently in their writings, their internal thinking stays the same, only the external body appears different to others. ALthough Woolf's work set the precedent for post modernist literature, infusing elements of fiction into biography, she weaves the internal stuggle of her former lover, Vita Sachville-West's life, together with her own perceptions of gender and sexuality, with an historical account of a young transsexual aristocrat's adventures over the span of centuries. Unlike a biography of her time, the action is secondary to the internal story. This is more of an account of how her lover (and as suggested by this author--Woolf herself), struggles with her own gender identity; a thinking so similar to transsexualism and conflict with a Eurocentric binary gender system. Here, the biographer (narrator) describes: the reaction to Orlando's change of sex, as it may appear in a scientific journal today;"[b]ut in every other respect, Orlando remained preceisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity. (Woolf, 138). Woolf captures the failure of the general public to grasp the concept of gender reassignment when she has the narrator express dismay in the lack of Orlando's reaction where "Orlando was a man till the age of thirty (Similar to our understanding of modern transsexuals who start their transition at middle age) when he became a woman and has remained ever since." (Woolf, 139)'. Woolfe's use of metaphor and foreshadowing is uncanny. The pyrotechnic displays prior to the deep sleep of Orlando depicts change. She puts Orlando on a ship called the 'Enamoured Lady,' and she is suddenly the object of the Captain's and other males' attention and realizes that the sexual fantacies of men creates a dillemma for her as a woman, where she must sheild her own desires as a woman. Woolfe precisely proclaims that '(Orlando) remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that women must be obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled... (and) "Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires ... for women are not (judging by my own short experience of the sex) obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled by nature." Woolfe does not stop at her proclivity to undress Orlando's gender identity but lays bare the confusion of sexual preference. Although a woman herself, Orlando proclaims that "it was still a woman she loved; and if the consciousness of being of the same sex had any effect at all, it was to quicken and deepen those feeling which she had had as a man." (Woolf, 161). Where she gives in to sensual thoughts of a man, the Captain on whose arm she trembles and remembers that she had once been a Duke and Ambassador, "that she, who had been lapped like a lily in folds of paduasoy, had hacked heads off, and lain with loose women amoung treasure sacks in holds of pirate ships..." Woolfe reveals a metaphoric character, the Archduchess Harriet Griselda of Finster-Aarhorn and Scan-op-Boom in the Roumanian territory, seen in chapter three as a woman, and in a later chapter is shown to be a man, the Archduke, who suddently professes his love for her. Woolfe's ability to produce a character like the Arduke Harry who today would fall somewhere on the transgendered scale, is amazing, for a woman in her time. Yet through all its carefully crafted language and delightful parody, the gender message she professes is much the same today as it may have been then, that "Clothes ... change our view of the world and the world's view of us...." Orlando challenges the Eurocentric binary gender construct of the world she lived in. Here, the writer's own indictment of the unrealistic bounds placed on women is evident and transposed by her narrator and Orlando's own expository reflections, "In every human bing a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only that clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above." (Woolfe, 189). Here, Woolfe appears to challenge more than the unfairness and imperfections of gender traditions on women. She uses comparaisons of the formalities of being a nieteenth century man and woman to make her point. Additionally, the most introspective journey in Orlando, is of a person who is not questioning her own gender identity, but defining it. Woolfe appears to depict, not confusion, but knowledge by the transsexual main character of her own identity, and chosing to adapt to it by changing the way the world looks at her, by changing sex. It is the world that suffers the confusion. Woolfe makes generalities about other persons hiding their sex in the clothing of the other gender, suggesting there are numerous persons in her era that suffer from some sort of gender dysphoria. After reading Orlando, and comparing it with the writings of transsexual, transgendered and social scientists,Woolfe describes so clearly the struggle a transgendered person experiences, that critics should look more closely at this writing. Woolfe's narrator states: "Of complications and confusions which thus result every one has had experience;" and as though afraid to delve deeper, she leaves this general question to "note only the odd effect it had in the particualr case of Orlando herself." As Woolfe so eloquently portrays the posttranssexual eptiome, "having now worn skirts for a considerable time, a certain change was visible in Orlando, which is to be found even in her face..." and where the narrator wonders, had both the man and woman of Orlando's time.worn the same clothes (in other words, different sexes but same gender) it is possible their outlook may have been the same too." (Woolfe, 188). Yet the most profound statement made in the text reveals Woolfe's secret exposition: "The difference between the sexes is, happily, one of great profundity. Clothes are but a symbol of soemthing hid deep beneath. It was a change in Orlando herself that dicated her choise of a woman's dress and of a woman's sex. And perhaps in this she was only exprssing rather than mor openly than usual---openness indeed was the soul of her nature---(Woolf, 189). Thus, Woolfe explains that Orlando chose to change his sex because he was in fact a woman, a woman's soul in a man's body. This book is highly recommended to all who are ever wonder what it is like for a transsexual to alter his sex, and begin living as the gender opposite of his or her sex. And for those who never wondered, it is a great read, full of insightful commentary on the possibility of a gender continuum and expanding the boundaries of a binary gender system of a phallocentric society.

28 people found this helpful

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Renee

My goodness, what a genius art piece!

Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2021

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Exquisitely detailed, beautiful metaphors and realism of transformation. This book is a whole journey of all the ways to complete and realize transformation and how time is the construct to destroy when seeking out who you truly are. I loved every page. A profound dedication to the trans community.

2 people found this helpful

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Nimrah

A Thought-provoking Tale

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2019

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Orlando is not the usual story. It is one of self-awareness, gender fluidity, and time. It is an experience in literature that one must partake on their own to fully appreciate its value.

Definitely a longer read but one that is worth it.

6 people found this helpful

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Cphe

Orlando

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2015

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I admit I went into this novel with some pre conceived thoughts about Orlando. The synopsis on various sites really doesn't do the book justice. I'd read To The Lighthouse prior to this novel and I admit I was somewhat prejudiced.

To say I was surprised by Orlando is an understatment. The concept, the style and prose was for this reader an eye opener. Prose that I could fall into and savour.

I'm rating it highly because of it's uniqueness and it is a book that you can not be ambivalent about. To me that is what reading is all about.

15 people found this helpful

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Gender-bending romp through English history

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2021

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Humorous and historical, this famous novel will be appreciated by those interesting in gender fluidity and English history. That said, sometimes it isn't an easy read and drags at times. The detailed descriptions are wonderful, but the more recent ones and references might seem obscure or dated to modern readers.

One person found this helpful

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Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2010

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There are many things that make Orlando a special book. First there is the fact that it is a Woolf book that is purely fun and romantic, and void of the trenchant tone of her other books. It is gorgeous, challenging farce, nothing more. Then there is the typical Woolf language, a stunning eye for detail, and rare and particular introspection about gender and identity. Then there is the novelty of the story itself, and how it embraces its matter-of-fact peculiarity. Woolf only rarely goes off the deep end here, and the story overall is mostly beautiful and keenly interesting. Fans of the wonderful Tilda Swinton movie will be reassured at its fidelity to the book. Fans of Woolf's canon will find this one of the more simply enjoyable books out there, but also a worthy addition to world literature in spite of its breezier attributes. Full recommendation.

8 people found this helpful

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tyarma

A wonderful novel about life and gender identity

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2019

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I honestly do not know what took me so long to discover this book. It is an excellent and insightful story. A novel about gender identity, from a time long before people talked much about it.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Brooke Fieldhouse

Just the creative, original and expressive literature I love.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2021

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It wouldn’t go down well at one of those cosy residential creative writing workshops – too much overwriting, too many exclamation marks, no tension builds, and ‘my dear!’ no plot. But who cares when you’ve got the liberal arts in four dimensions?
ORLANDO – and the very first sentence hints to the reader that s/he is in for some gender-shifting – is a nobleman living at the time of Queen Elizabeth 1st. The book is subtitled ‘A Biography,’ and is an unashamed hero/ine worship of the eponymous nobleman who – it appears - enjoys a lifespan of some fifteen score and ten years, taking him (it’s a ‘her’ by then) well into the Jazz age. Woolf has an extraordinary knack of giving the sense of time tumbling past; ‘rugs appeared, beards were grown, trousers were fastened tight under the instep...’ Not only does Orlando defy the passing years and the boundaries of gender, s/he marries (some English lord with a nonsensical name) and gives birth. There are other characters; there’s Nick Greene a loud-mouthed poet, Sasha a feral Russian princess who double-crosses Orlando when s/he’s a young nobleman. There’s a predatory archduchess – who also seems to have the gift of gender-slipping. There are also ‘ghosts’; Alexander Pope keeps cropping up, Marlowe, Milton, Dryden and Shakespeare. It’s a mourning of dead poets past, and a witty lamentation of the fact that ‘today’s poets are merely in the pay of booksellers.’ But in a way, the most important character other than Orlando him/herself is The Oak Tree, it’s a poem which Orlando has been working on all his/her life. A touchstone and so representative of Orlando’s inner self and outward endeavour that – and as this book has no real plot it’s no spoiler to reveal that – when the poem is awarded a prize in 1928 and its writer receives his/her 200 guineas, the reader can’t help feeling deeply touched.
It’s the humour and playfulness which always beats me about Virginia Woolf – for one so heavily visited by melancholy – (see Mrs Dalloway, and the numerous short stories including the -frankly – hilarious The Society). Orlando is packed with literary references – what a show off she was, but I love it! I kept being minded of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in which he remarks to the effect of that we don’t just live one life, we live multifarious lives. Not only does Orlando defy time and gender, s/he also lives multifarious lives. There’s a curious reference to Lady Windermere’s Fan – except Woolf writes ‘Lady Winchelsea’s Fan.’ There’s Gulliver’s Travels, The Rape of the Lock, there’s a bizarre episode of ankle-twisting which puts one in mind of the early scenes of Jane Eyre. I’ve also read somewhere that there’s a reference to Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, published the same year, but I couldn’t find it.
So, read, enjoy, and remember, ‘as long as she is thinking of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.’!

One person found this helpful

John Lawless

A Bright Sky and a Dark Cloud

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 18, 2021

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Books, study notes and commentaries have been written about Orlando so a short review cannot do it justice. It’s just the sheer magic of reading the text, with its abundance of literary references, fantastical (almost childlike) constructions, absurdity but above all the playfulness and vivacity of it all. There are numerous streams of consciousness but I found these far more accessible than those which issued from the pen of James Joyce. I cannot but help thinking that Ms Woolf had great fun writing this especially as she used it as an occasion to write a love letter to Vita Sackville-West. And then there's that more serious side where Woolf craftily constructed a theme from which she was able to challenge a number of the sacred cows (especially the social and sexual ones) of the accepted norms of the day. In addition, reading carefully through the lines, the reader can sense, at times, the melancholy of the author, a black cloud which tragically lead her to die eventually by suicide. This is a unique book; there is none like it. Likewise the experience of reading it is a joy but a bright sky which is tinged by a dark cloud.

Lyndsey OHalloran

Strange but funny

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 10, 2012

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Being a book I had to read for my Gender and Sexuality class this year at university, this was not a book I was looking forward to at all. I haven't had the best of luck with Virginia Woolf over the past couple of years and after reading the first couple of pages, I wanted to read it even less.

The beginning of the book is extremely hard going and slow to get into. Set in the Elizabethan England, there is a lot of information about who is ruling the country at the time and where Orlando stands in the middle of it all. The language used is quite pretentious and needlessly long winded. These were the main reasons for me not being able to get into the story immediately and not wanting to continue reading. However, after putting the book down for a couple of weeks and giving it another shot, I found it easier and easier to read as I continued.

Orlando spans over a couple of hundred years which is extremely strange and different for a novel and I didn't quite understand why for a while. Orlando, at the beginning of the story, is a man who a nobleman during the rule of Queen Elizabeth, then going on to be an Ambassador in Constantinople. Part way through the story though, Orlando falls asleep and wakes up a woman. Another strange part of the story. Anyway, as Orlando changes to be a woman, still having all knowledge of her life previously as a man, the times change throughout the story. This is the main theme of the book. Having been both a man and a woman, Orlando is able to see how the treatment of women changes throughout time and also from both points of view.

I actually really enjoyed the way that Woolf changed the era being written about. I thought that this would bug me and that it would make the plot flow at a slightly weird pace. Strangely, this is something that I felt made the plot flow quite well as the time periods are quite blurred at times and the change happens so quickly that you barely notice. It was also interesting to see how Orlando changed over time, both when he went from man to woman and also how thoughts changed about different things. As the book ends in 1928, there are so many changes in the world compared with when the story first started.

Orlando is also very funny - this I wasn't expecting at all. Through Orlando's experiences as a woman, it becomes clear that she doesn't really know what to do in certain situations. She explains at one point that if she had still been a man, you would have taken out a sword and cut someone's head off. Things like this she cannot do as a woman so the funny parts of the book came when Orlando found herself in a dissimilar situation. I laughed a fair amount through reading this book and this isn't something I have experienced with a Woolf novel before.

Even though I had a bad experience with this book to begin with, it turned out that I really quite liked it. If you haven't been a fan of Woolf in the past, like me, you may find this novel a bit better.

7 people found this helpful

Jaggers

clever and thought provoking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 27, 2010

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This novel is a wonderful, clever piece of writing by virginia woolf. The titular characters' life spans a number of centuries, transforming from male into female at one point and so able to see the world from a different gender perspective. Its both a charming and disarming way of reflecting on how men and women behave towards each other. Orlando as a female realises it is for her 'to refuse and then to yield' in the romantic encounters - as opposed to the male 'pursue and conquer' approach that Orlando had known as a male. Its a unique take on a well known situation and all wrapped up in such a lyrical way with words, descriptions and stream of consciousness that it is like someone reading you a fable on a cold winters day in the comfort of a wood panelled room complete with a blazing fire crackling in a fireplace.
Among the many insightful passages in this story, one that lingers describes the problematic nature of being witty in a social gathering. Reflecting on the many parties Orlando goes to (through the centuries) she realises there is only an illusion of witty conversation from the urbane erudite people who are members of this social scene, an illusion which keeps the notion of having fun well oiled until the evening when someone really is profoundly witty - and this tremendous moment provokes only silence and the break up of the whole social scene! I think about this often now when I watch QI - its great to watch on TV at a distance - but would that amount of wit bouncing around your home at a party actually be the end of any fun - I have a hunch that virginia woolf is right and that it would.
This is the first Woolf book I have read and its a great introduction; looking forward now to reading her other works.

16 people found this helpful

Steve in Northumberland

Surprised it is so popular

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2020

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Tiny writing. No paragraph breaks. Dreadful stream of consciousness writing. Very repetitive.

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