Orlando - Hardcover

Woolf, Virginia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0141198524 ISBN 13: 9780141198521

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2011

Synopsis

A brand new series of five of Woolf's major works, in beautifully designed hardback editions.

Written for Virginia Woolf's intimate friend, the charismatic, bisexual writers Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a playful mock 'biography' of a chameleon-like historical figure who changes sex and identity at will. First masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young sixteenth-century nobleman, then gallops through the centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf's own time.

A wry commentary on gender roles and modes of history, Orlando is also, in Woolf's own words, a light-hearted 'writer's holiday' which delights in its ambiguity and capriciousness.

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of the editor and critic Leslie Stephen. She suffered a traumatic adolescence after the deaths of her mother, in 1895, and her step-sister Stella, in 1897, leaving her subject to breakdowns for the rest of her life. She was drawn into the company of writers and artists such as Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, later known as the Bloomsbury Group. Among them she met Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1912, and together they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, appeared in 1915, and her major novels include Mrs Dalloway (1925), the historical fantasy Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1941). Woolf lived an energetic life, reviewing and writing and dividing her time between London and the Sussex Downs. In 1941, fearing another attack of mental illness, she drowned herself.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141198524
• ISBN 13: 9780141198521
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336