Orlando

Written for Virginia Woolf's intimate friend, the charismatic, bisexual writer 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 three 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 the Author

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. Shortly after her father's death, she moved to Bloomsbury where, with her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, Virginia met writers and artists such as Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, forming what later became known as the Bloomsbury Group. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf and together, in 1917, they founded their own printing press. Virginia Woolf met Vita Sackville-West in 1922, for whom the brilliant fantasy of Orlando was written. She died in 1941 after drowning herself in the River Ouse.