Orlando

By Virginia Woolf

Orlando follows the eponymous hero over three centuries of his lifetime, during which he ages only thirty-six years. In a setting that combines history and fantasy, Orlando falls into numerous adventures, including an affair with the elderly Queen of England and a passionate tryst with a Russian princess. Perhaps the most notable period of Orlando’s life, though, is when he falls into a deep sleep and wakes up days later as a woman.

Orlando is a semi-autobiographical historical novel based on the life Virginia Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West. Woolf dedicates the novel to Sackville-West, and through it explores the concept of gender roles and the human condition. Orlando has been adapted for both theatre and film, most notably in the 1992 feature film starring Tilda Swinton in the role of Orlando.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Dec 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781443433761

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English novelist. Born in London, she was raised in a family of eight children by Julia Prinsep Jackson, a model and philanthropist, and Leslie Stephen, a writer and critic. Homeschooled alongside her sisters, including famed painter Vanessa Bell, Woolf was introduced to classic literature at an early age. Following the death of her mother in 1895, Woolf suffered her first mental breakdown. Two years later, she enrolled at King’s College London, where she studied history and classics and encountered leaders of the burgeoning women’s rights movement. Another mental breakdown accompanied her father’s death in 1904, after which she moved with her Cambridge-educated brothers to Bloomsbury, a bohemian district on London’s West End. There, she became a member of the influential Bloomsbury Group, a gathering of leading artists and intellectuals including Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Vanessa Bell, E.M. Forster, and Leonard Woolf, whom she would marry in 1912. Together they founded the Hogarth Press, which would publish most of Woolf’s work. Recognized as a central figure of literary modernism, Woolf was a gifted practitioner of experimental fiction, employing the stream of consciousness technique and mastering the use of free indirect discourse, a form of third person narration which allows the reader to enter the minds of her characters. Woolf, who produced such masterpieces as Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and A Room of One’s Own (1929), continued to suffer from depression throughout her life. Following the German Blitz on her native London, Woolf, a lifelong pacifist, died by suicide in 1941. Her career cut cruelly short, she left a legacy and a body of work unmatched by any English novelist of her day.

Reviews for Orlando

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A surreal novel, unmoored from conventional time framework, centred on an immortal, sometimes male and sometimes female. Woolf was a highly skilled writer, and though the work is sometimes entertaining, overall, I found this exercise dull.

[antao-3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Biological Constructs: "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf(Original Review, 2002-06-18)I’m probably in a minority, but I find Woolf hugely overrated. A snob in the way that Wilde was a snob before her, sucking up to the wealthy and titled and, like Wilde, happy to be unfaithful if it ingratiated her with the gentry. People go on about ‘a room of one’s own’ but have they read the whole piece? She thought only a few superior personages should be allowed to write, and then only for a select audience.

[margaretfield · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

about a person that changes genders and lives over several centuries

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this one not knowing exactly what it was about - and I find a very funny, well written, Satire-ish book on what it means to be man or a woman in the British England. First - this is a book you have to read carefully. Orlando doesn't age like a regular person, so years pass, societal beliefs, and general culture change in a blink of an eye. But, it is written in an easy style, with a light touch that makes it a very accessible book. It's a completely different style than Virginia Woolf's other books (Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, etc.)Ms. Woolf has a way of writing that manages to capture the absurdity of culture's expectation of both being Male and being Female. Orlando, being both at different times, shows just how limiting both are sexes are. Its also a critique of Victorian England and how stifling it is to women.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Vreemde pseudobiografie van personage dat door de eeuwen heen van geslacht veranderd. Mijmering over de vrouwelijke (en menselijke) conditie. Fascinerend en wervelend geschreven, maar niet helemaal my cup of tea.

[delightedlibrarian · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Possibly one of the strangest novels I've ever read. So... flexible (for lack of a better term) in time and gender, not to mention the legality of identity. I finished it thinking how the story worked which was amazing because logically it doesn't work what so ever.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not sure what to make of this. As a novel, far too many things are left hanging or unexplained. How come Orlando can live for 400 years and be 36 being just one... As a thought provoking piece of writing, however, it asks a lot of questions that are not uncontroversial now, so goodness only knows what it was like when it was published. On the face of it, Orlando is a biography of the titular character, an Elizabethan Nobleman who has too much time on his hands and a penchant for poetry. He goes to Constantinople as ambassador and comes back transformed into a woman. From that point, the love of literature persists, although the adjustment to life as a woman takes some time. The questions raised are about who we are, the face we present to the world. Orlando starts as a man, ends as a woman, and so has a lot of adjusting to do, in terms of what is expected of her now in her thought, speech, dress and behaviour. Why do we expect, even now, women and men to act differently in the same situations? Then there are questions about conformity, Orlando feels obliged to conform to the times she lives in, but how to do that while remaining true to herself. Some people are of their time, others appear to be ahead or living in the past. They're all equally valuable, should they conform and change their thinking to accommodate their times? There's a lot of what might be described as the thought police

[andreablythe · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Woolf presents a satirical biography of Orlando, a young man who lives for over 300 years and has a mysterious transformation into being a women along the way. It's never clear how it is Orlando is able to gain this immortality (perhaps his obsession with thought, words, poetry?) or how it is that Orlando becomes a woman, which worked for the way the story unfolded. I really wanted to be charmed by this, as I had been with other books by Woolf, but whereas the vibrancy of language and compactness of the stories in both To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway delighted me, Orlando failed to hold my attention. Also, I was deeply bothered the racism within the book, particularly the opening scene (in which Orlando toys with the head of a nameless dead Moor), but also by the Orientalism in the scenes in Turkey and the portrayal of the "gipsies." The fact that the story was "of it's time" is not enough to shake the unsettled feeling from me.

[ffortsa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Everyone in our book circle agreed that this was a funny book, not what you would expect from Woolf, but it is after all a gloss on Vita Sackville-West and Woolf's complicated relationship with her. What is impressive: Well, for one, the brilliant evocation of such different times across the four and a half centuries of Orlando's existence. As Karenmarie mentioned, the evocation of a frozen Thames and the celebrations on the ice, and then the breakup and disaster that came after, are beautifully realized. And this continues through the coming times, in England and in Constantinople and in the gypsy camp. Then there are the changing attitudes toward women in society that Orlando lives through and adjusts to. And there are the sly sideswipes and writers past and present, which in some cases were laugh-out-loud funny.My edition had notes in the back to help readers who don't know the historical references. Sometimes they were a bit overdone, but often helpful.Sometimes it feels a bit like an adult fairy tale, or a fantasy adventure. Sackville-West's life has something to do with that, but to read this only as a roman-a-clef would do it an injustice. So much daring in Woolf's time and before had to do with breaking conventions that deserved to be broken, it's hardly avoidable to see this as a social commentary as well as a romp.

[tgamble54 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Not what I like about VW's writing. Didn't finish.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Vreemde pseudobiografie van personage dat door de eeuwen heen van geslacht veranderd. Mijmering over de vrouwelijke (en menselijke) conditie. Fascinerend en wervelend geschreven, maar niet helemaal my cup of tea.

[crazybatcow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Another classic I had to read for a research project. And I liked it even less than I thought I would. I have no idea why the "experts" rave about this so much... as a lesbian love letter to someone "in the know" (i.e. they have a clue what Woolf was going on about) maybe it is okay. But as a story?? not so much... there is no plot and no suspense... Basically it is a biography of a woman who pretends to be a man so she can have sex with women (and some transgender theorists claim she was transgendered but I didn't see this, I just saw a lesbian trying to live as a man in a world that didn't allow lesbians) and writes page after page about their clothing, their culture, their houses, their roads, their scenery.... ad nauseam.Again, I tried to read this in text form but the paragraphs are very very long and it was hard to keep my place without my eyes glazing over in boredom, so I got it in audio... which was better, only because my eyes no longer hurt.

[ursula_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Woolf takes on the role of "biographer" to Orlando, who starts out as a young man in Elizabethan England. At a point in the book when he is about thirty years old, some magic occurs and he becomes a woman. He is the same person as before, just now in skirts and a different place in society. The change gives plenty of room for commentary on society and typical attitudes to and about women. This is pretty much what I expected, but I also found out something I didn't expect at all: Virginia Woolf had a sense of humor.Many parts of this book are funny. Quotably funny, although Woolf does love a sentence that runs on (she actually even pokes fun at that at one point!). She has humorous things to say about men, women, the relationships between them, writing, writers, society, politics, you name it. I was convinced I was going to love this book unabashedly, and then it inexplicably bogs down about two-thirds of the way through it. By then Orlando is living in the modern age (1920s). The immortality, unlike the gender transformation, has never been explained at all, by the way. I don't know exactly how Woolf lost me here, but she did. Maybe it wasn't as funny anymore? Maybe it was that the weirdness had piled on top of itself to a point that it no longer worked? I don't know exactly what happened, but the last part was a slog for me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed much about this book and came away with pages of quotes pulled from it.Recommended for: people who like snarkQuote: "No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high."

[bayardus-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Orlando features less of the beautiful prose passages that I associate with Woolf's writing than her other works, which leaves the story to carry much of the burden. Unlike Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse (and I suspect The Waves, which I shall read shortly), there is an actual story here focusing on the life of the titular Orlando. Orlando occupies a strange semi-supernatural role where both sex and gender shift and the years pass without leaving much trace. It's an interesting center for the story in theory, though in practice I found Orlando to be a rather uninteresting character who goes from a pining youth to a married woman without inspiring much interest or sympathy from me. The character exists in different time periods more than s/he lives in them, making the different ages mere window dressing. Eventually the book ends, though it doesn't feel so much like the story has concluded as it does that Woolf thought she had written enough.

Decidedly different from most Woolf in both style and substance, I thought this one was alright.

[amerynth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn't particularly enjoy Virginia Woolf's "Orlando". It was a rather fantastical yet dull story.... and I really wasn't able to discern what Woolf was trying to say.There are a few brilliant passages of prose -- particularly the part with the frozen river Thames. The story is of a man who turns into a woman and then lives 300 years.... I'm not sure what the point of it all was. This is the fourth Woolf book I've read and she clearly isn't a good match for me. I only really enjoyed "The Years," which has a much more traditional narrative and style. There are several authors that I feel like I'm just not smart enough to understand and Woolf is among them.

[jbd1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A lovely, lively meditation on biography, history, reading, human nature and sexuality. Amusing, witty, and thought-provoking all at once. Highly recommended.

[sanddune_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've read some Virginia Woolf before but this is very different. In fact, in a strange way what it reminds me of more than anything is A Hundred Days of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: there are definite overtones of magic realism here. Orlando is introduced to the reader as he practises his fencing by attacking the dried up heads of Moors brought back from the crusades by his father (or was it grandfather) in the attic of the mansion owned by his family for generations. And this is the first clue perhaps that time in this book does not flow as quickly as might be expected, for Orlando is a boy in the later days of Elizabeth I, and the crusades are long gone. But his ambitions of martial glory are thwarted by the Queen, who ordains that a military life is too dangerous for her favourite. So Orlando becomes a young man at the court of Elizabeth I and falls in and out of love, all the while concealing his desire to write, as to be a writer is not at all a respectable thing for an aristocrat. But time passes very slowly indeed for Orlando (although in the best tradition of magic realism, this is not commented on, or even seemingly noticed by Orlando himself or those around him) When Orlando requests the king to send him abroad as an ambassador to avoid the unwanted attentions of a suitor, the king is Charles II, more than seventy years have passed since he was the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, but Orlando is still a young man of less than thirty. And it's while an ambassador to the Turkish Court at Constantinople that Orlando's life changes for ever, as he becomes a woman overnight. There is no explanation of this, and although there are court cases aplenty to determine his legal situation on his return to England, the reality of the situation is accepted without query by all around him.On my first reading of the book I was expecting a very different book from the one that I thought I eventually got, and I think that detracted slightly from my enjoyment. On this second reading I just went with the flow and enjoyed the ride, as here when the break-up of the frozen Thames is being described:'Where for three months and more, there had been solid ice of such thickness that it seemed permanent as stone, and a whole gay city has been stood on its pavement, was now a race of turbulent yellow waters. The river had gained its freedom in the night. It was as if a sulphur spring (to which view many philosophers inclined) had risen from the volcanic regions beneath and burst the ice asunder with such vehemence that it swept the huge and massy fragments furiously apart. The mere look of the water was enough to turn one giddy. All was riot and confusion. The river was strewn with icebergs. Some of these were as broad as a bowling green and as high as a house; others no bigger than a man's hat, but most fantastically twisted. Now would come down a whole convoy of ice blocks sinking everything that stood in their way. Now, eddying and swirling like a tortured serpent, the river would seem to be hurtling itself between the fragments and tossing them from bank to bank, so they could be heard smashing against the piers and pillars. But what was the most awful and inspiring of terror was the sight of the human creatures who had been trapped in the night and now paced their twisting and precarious islands in the utmost agony of spirit. Whether they jumped into the flood or stayed on the ice their doom was certain.'A strange book that is apparently a tribute to Vita-Sackville-West. Nothing is ever explained, and quite a lot makes very little sense but it has some interesting thoughts on gender and the nature of time.

[thecriticaltimes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a book best read after you're 40. If you were forced to read this in college then I fully understand why this book made no sense to you whatsoever. Quite frankly I don't quite get it completely myself yet but I do appreciate its scope and intent. In a nutshell Orlando, a titled squire a few centuries ago can't find peace of mind and eternally asks the question: is this all there is? Through many abstract adventures and many decades of living he lands in Italy where he falls asleep for days only to awake a woman. From this perspective and this point on a similar story is told and Orlando still asks the question: now that I have this different perspective: does it matter?None of the questions stated above can be explicitly found in the novel. In fact nothing I said so far is really clearly described and if someone argued that the entire book is the retelling of a dream I might agree. Many passages appear to be randomly stitched together and certain facts which appear crucial are even casually mentioned and then dropped altogether (such as Orlando having a son). There is a reason for this I'm convinced.It is a short book written in archaic language that changes depending on the time period Orlando lives in. That makes the book difficult to read if the vagueness and dreamlike sequences weren't throwing you off in the first place. Reading Orlando is a lot easier of you've first read All Men Are Mortal by Simone de Beauvoir. That particular novel asks the same question and wants to know what this life we live is all about. But it does so by playing a man and a woman against each other so that we see our existence through their conflicts. In Orlando this idea is compressed by literally combining the two sexes into one.Virginia Woolf left out a lot of narrative detail because it isn't important for the question she asks. That is why we do not know how it happens that Orlando changes from a man into a woman. Or why nobody thought it weird that the owner of the mansion suddenly appeared quite different.Although Woolf goes into some detail regarding human relationships, she paints Orlando as someone intrigued by that part of humanity but who isn't completely invested in it. It is difficult to say what the author wanted Orlando to conclude about human existence but it seems she concludes that art and writing is the only valuable activity and product we can experience and produce in our lifetime. Then again I might have to read it again in about 20 years to see if my perspective has changed yet again about this novel.

[michaelbartley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

strange book, at times especially in the first half, very thoughtful. the character goes from being a man to a woman very interesting way of exploring gender roles. at times the novel was funny. the last part seemed to go on forever, it lost my interest. but I do want to see the movie!

[amelish · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I didn't really feel this book until I saw the movie (with Tilda Swinton). Not my favorite V. Woolf, but possibly more interesting.

[jimmychanga · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I finished Orlando a couple of days ago. It was not really my thing. I understand that it started as a joke, but (even though I sorta know what she was making fun of) it just wasn't funny to me. I'm sure Virginia Woolf had a hoot writing it, though, so I'm happy for her.

Towards the middle, the "biographer's" voice started sounding very much like the "lecturer's" voice in A Room of One's Own. In fact, I was surprised at the similarity in tonality between the two works. It had that same quality of breaking the third wall, of creating a make-believe scenario that was obviously not true (i.e. written to illustrate a point), and also of that slightly didactic "here's what I want to say on the topic of the sexes" which I didn't mind as much in AROOO since it was an essay afterall.

Anyway, if you (like me) loved Mrs. Dalloway and her other Dalloway-like works, then don't read this expecting more of the same. You may love it or you may hate it. If you hated Mrs. Dalloway and her other Dalloway-like works, then definitely give this a chance. This may be your thing.

[scolgo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Surreal and eclectic. As a piece of allegory, this was an interesting book. A bit long-winded in places but still mostly entertaining.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just an outright joy of writing read of a novel that plays with time and love. It can be read as something resembling fantasy/science fiction - it can also serve as a nice break from her more challenging books.

[michael8xolotl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The writing is beautiful. Woolf tosses off historical generalizations and profound insights about life as effortlessly as I just took a swig of coffee. I usually hate attempts at profundity, although it may be more accurate to say I hate failed attempts, which I'm forced to see every damn day. Woolf doesn't fail though and, better, hides the attempt. She really can't compete with coffee though.

[auntieclio · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Orlando is odd, and I can't quite put my finger on why I think it's odd. It's not the gender bending, although the "and one day Orlando woke up and was a woman" was definitely odd. Finding that one of her lovers had been pursuing her in drag was not so odd as puzzling. The three centuries Orlando lives in this tale is a little odd. I understand the parody of biography Woolf is writing, and the pokes she takes at rigid cultural mores which insist women must behave in certain ways and are not allowed to have sexual interest in other women. I just found the whole book odd, and a bit of a slog and finished it because I've never read Virginia Woolf before and felt I owed it to myself to finish.

[schmerguls · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This was published in 1928 and is fiction, telling of Orlando who starts out as a man in the time of Queen Elizabeth (I) but at age 30 turns into a woman. She ages very little and the story ends with her in London in 1928, she having married and had a son. There is some humor, which accounts for the generous rating I give the book. This is the fourth book by Woolf I have read, the others being To the Lighthouse (read 30 Aug 1950), A Room of One's Own (read 22 Aug 1998), and Mrs. Dalloway (read 21 May 1999).She does not talk to me so I won't read anything more by her.

[lyndatrue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of Virginia Woolf's best works, it presents the impossible as believable, and is one of the very few novels I've ever seen taken to the screen that kept the improbable becoming possible without insult to the intellect, and with respect for the beauty.

[janesteen_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Where I got the book: public domain freebie on Kindle.This is one of those novels I've been promising myself I'd read for years, especially after visiting Knole Castle where Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West grew up and which provided the inspiration and location of this tale of a man-or-is-it-woman with many lives. It also houses the manuscript, so you can see just how hard Woolf worked on her prose which is GLORIOUS.This novel is just...Sublime.Weird.Funny.Tragic.Quotable.Luminous.Picturesque.Driven.And a good many other adjectives. I remember once reading an extract from Woolf's diary where she describes her writing as being like those times when you go to the loo and have an endless crap; you think you're done and then another lot comes out, and another. This was a writer who wrote because she couldn't help herself and when she wasn't writing, she read, endlessly. And if she couldn't read or write she thought. Her head must have been like heaven and hell at the same time.And that somehow gets into Orlando: the voices, the ages, the fear of death, the fear of life, the striving for immortality and the knowledge that immortality is a tragedy. Woolf understands that gender is just happenstance, and that we've all got a bit of both sexes inside us; so she makes her main character both male and female and points out that the female version is by her very nature less free. And at the center of the action is the great house that endures through the centuries, changing but never changing. The Sackvilles still live there, and visitors are told that if they hear children's voices, it's not ghosts; it's people, occupying a space that's been in their family since 1566. Ain't that grand?

[kymmac · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Started off so slowly, but I was on board by the time the river froze over (the washerwoman stuck under there!) and Orlando changed sexes. Loved her living so happily with the gypsies. Didn't care whether or not it was about her lover or not. Loved the photographs, too. Biggest book club attendance by far - 12 of us, I think!

[aine.fin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I struggled with this. I always expect to love Virginia Woolf's novels but the stream of consciousness style is a bit of a chore for me, ashamed as I am to admit it. There were a lot of in-jokes in this and I felt a very strong sense of nudging or smirking from the author, which I tired of. It seems like she wrote it for her inner circle and I consequently felt excluded from full enjoyment of it. That said, it is a cleverly crafted farce with exploration of gender roles which would have been ground-breaking at the time.