Orlando: A Biography - Softcover

Woolf, Virginia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0586044485 ISBN 13: 9780586044483

Publisher: Flamingo, 1991

Synopsis

Published to coincide with a major film adaptation of this classic novel, a story of a journey through time, of a man who lives for four hundred years and becomes a woman in the twentieth century.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Dedicated to Vita Sackville-West, inspired by her extraordinary character and her noble family history, 'Orlando' was described by Nigel Nicolson as 'one of the most charming love letters in literature'. Woolf herself called it 'a writer's holiday', in which she tosses Vita 'from on sex to another, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, and ends by photographing her in the mud at Long Barn, with dogs, awaiting Virginia's arrival next day'.

An extravagant incarnation of Vita's personality, Orlando – first seen as a dashing young man at the court of Elizabeth I – weaves in and out of the next three centuries, slipping between genders, emerging as a woman during the Restoration and continuing life as a woman to the present day. Alongside the play-fullness and wit of 'Orlando' is a fierce and spirited statement about gender and cultural conditioning. First masculine, then feminine, a man of action, a lady of fashion, Orlando begins to realise that in his former life, he was free and content but, as a woman, chaste, scented and exquisitely apparelled.' No longer can she go to war, lead a procession, curse and fight. All she can do is pour tea and ask her guests, 'D' you take sugar? D'you take cream?'

Both a clever, ornate conceit and powerful, satirical manifesto against male privilege, 'Orlando' remains utterly unique in twentieth-century literature.

This Definitive edition is the original 1929 Hogarth Press Uniform Edition text.

“A fantasy, impossible but delicious: existing in its own right by the colour of imagination and an exuberance of life and wit.”
TLS

About the Author

Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, short story writer, publisher, critic and member of the Bloomsbury group, as well as being regarded as both a hugely significant modernist and feminist figure. Her most famous works include Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0586044485
• ISBN 13: 9780586044483
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208