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Orlando [Paperback]

Virginia Woolf
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Jan 12 2001 Harvest Book, Hb 266
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.

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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

'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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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4.5 out of 5 stars
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A gender-bending saga of three centuries Dec 29 2003
By A.J.
Format: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.

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5.0 out of 5 stars I shall dream wild dreams April 30 2011
By E. A Solinas HALL OF FAME TOP 10 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
No lover in the world ever wrote a valentine more exquisite than Virginia Woolf's tribute to her lover Vita Sackville-West. That tribute was "Orlando: A Biography," a magical-realism tale about a perpetually youthful, charming hero/ine who traverses three centuries and both genders -- and Woolf's writing reaches a new peak as she explores the hauntingly sensuous world of Orlando.

Orlando was born a young aristocratic man in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and when the dying monarch visited his home she became his new court favorite (and briefly lover). His passionate, curious personality attracted many other women over the years -- until he fell in love with Sasha, a mercurial but faithless Russian princess (supposedly based on Sackville-West's ex-girlfriend). Bereft of true love, he devoted himself to poetry and entertainment.

But then he's assigned to be an ambassador to Constantinople, and something strange happens -- while a bloody revolution rages, he sleeps for a full week... and wakes newly metamorphosed into a woman. With the same mind and soul but a female body, Orlando sets out on a new life -- and discovers that women aren't quite as different from men as she once thought.

"Orlando: A Biography" is a very weird book, and was even more so when it was written since "magical realism" didn't exist as a literary style in 1928. Virginia Woolf makes no explanations about Orlando's immortality or unexpected gender switch. It's simply accepted that once he was a man, and then she became a woman, and that s/he has lived from the Elizabethan era until at least the 1920s (and who knows, maybe Orlando still wanders among us?).

And Woolf's writing is at its peak here. Her prose is soaked in luxurious descriptions that constantly tease the senses -- silver and gold, frozen flowers, crystalline ice, starlight and the exquisite expanses of nature's beauty. At times the sensual writing seems almost feverish, and Woolf adds an almost mythic quality by inserting spirits of feminine virtues (Modesty, Purity and Chastity appear to try to hide Orlando's feminine body), and by having her hero/ine encounter great poets, queens and men of the sea.

And Orlando him/herself is a truly fascinating character -- s/he can be sweet, passionate, romantic, wild and melancholy, and s/he has an almost magnetic charisma. He starts off the story as an elusive romantic teenager, suffers a heartbreak that matures him as an artist, and post-metamorphosis she becomes a woman of the modern world. Both in mind and body, Orlando is a very different woman at the end than the boy s/he began as.

"Orlando: A Biography" is a truly spellbinding book -- Virginia Woolf's prose enthralls the senses while her main character explores the boundaries of gender. A must-read, for everyone.
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5.0 out of 5 stars she's so brilliant Feb 25 2004
Format:Paperback
just read this book. gender issues are so fascinating, especially when addressed by one of the masters.
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Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars 14 year old reader
After exploring the literary genius of Virginia Wolff within her book "Mrs. Dalloway", I was eager to read other books by her. My brother's name is Orlando. Read more
Published on Sep 11 2003 by Amy
4.0 out of 5 stars good
very good story, incredible themes.. took a little long to get into..
Published on April 8 2003
5.0 out of 5 stars Glorious piece of art work
Once you get into the flow of Woolf's tangled web of a world, this book is at the same time poetic, philosophical, and a beautiful social commentary. I love it!
Published on Oct 15 2002 by Princess Jessie
5.0 out of 5 stars Man and Woman
Woolf's skill of imagery in writing is amazing. Her love of her character Orlando is apparent in the gentle way she carries him/her from the 15th century to 1928. Read more
Published on July 7 2002
4.0 out of 5 stars A fanciful spoof of literary history and sexual roles
This fake biography (complete with counterfeit photographs and an index) is not Virginia Woolf's greatest novel by any means--but even the least of her works must rank among the... Read more
Published on Jan 27 2002 by D. Cloyce Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars A song of love
"Orlando" is such a playful novel, full of richness of characters and commentaries. Written as a love letters of sorts to Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West,... Read more
Published on Dec 4 2001 by "blissengine"
5.0 out of 5 stars Prepare to have your mind expanded.
On top of the beautiful imagery and quirky central character, that tricky Virginia Woolf brings us scary, unusual ideas and makes us listen...and care...and laugh... Read more
Published on Oct 19 2001 by Ellen C. Falkenberry
4.0 out of 5 stars Very funny
This book is magical and absolutely hilarious. Okay, so it takes a certain sense of humor to really enjoy it, but if a satire on writing throughout the ages sounds like fun to... Read more
Published on May 16 2001 by "meganica"
4.0 out of 5 stars One of Woolf's more entertaining novels
_Orlando_ is Virginia Woolf's mock biography of her friend Vita Sackville-West. It follows the title character through English history from the Elizabethan Age to the 1920s, when... Read more
Published on Oct 9 2000 by Joy Kim
3.0 out of 5 stars Orlando as a Commentary on Women in History
Throughout history, women have always been the subject of oppression and stereotyping. Today the world is finally beginning to accept women as intellectuals, workers, writers, and... Read more
Published on July 6 2000 by Patrick Flavin
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