Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
"Orlando: A Biography" is a novel written by Virginia Woolf and was first published in 1928. The book is a unique and imaginative work that defies easy categorization. It is often considered a blend of historical fiction, fantasy, and satire. "Orlando" is notable for its exploration of gender, identity, and the passage of time.
Plot Summary:
The novel follows the life and adventures of Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabethan England who lives for several centuries, experiencing a variety of historical and cultural changes. Early in the story, Orlando is granted the gift of immortality by Queen Elizabeth I, and the narrative takes the reader through different periods of English history, from the 16th century to the 20th century.
As the centuries pass, Orlando undergoes a remarkable transformation from male to female without aging, providing a unique exploration of gender identity and fluidity. The novel combines historical events and characters with elements of fantasy and satire.
Themes:
- Gender and Identity: One of the central themes of "Orlando" is the exploration of gender identity. The character of Orlando undergoes a sex change, and Woolf uses this transformation to comment on the fluidity of gender and challenge societal expectations.
- Time and Change: The novel spans several centuries, providing a commentary on the passage of time and the changing nature of society, culture, and politics. Through Orlando's experiences, Woolf explores the mutability of historical and social constructs.
- Literary Satire: Virginia Woolf uses "Orlando" to satirize various aspects of literature, including the conventions of historical biographies and the treatment of gender roles in literature. The novel is often seen as a playful and subversive take on traditional literary forms.
Style and Narrative Experimentation:
Virginia Woolf is known for her innovative narrative techniques, and "Orlando" is no exception. The novel employs a stream-of-consciousness style, and its structure is both experimental and non-linear. The narrative blends historical events with Woolf's own imaginative and fantastical elements.
Legacy:
"Orlando" has become a landmark work in the exploration of gender and identity in literature. Its experimental narrative techniques and themes of transformation have made it a subject of study and discussion in academic and literary circles. The novel's influence extends to discussions of feminism, LGBTQ+ literature, and the broader understanding of identity and time in literature. "Orlando" remains a significant and influential work in Virginia Woolf's body of writing.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781835913215 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Global Book Company |
| Publication date: | 04/27/2024 |
| Pages: | 178 |
| Sales rank: | 938,029 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.38(d) |
About the Author
Date of Birth:
January 25, 1882Date of Death:
March 28, 1941Place of Birth:
LondonPlace of Death:
Sussex, EnglandEducation:
Home schoolingRead an Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
HE—FOR THERE could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando’s father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.
Orlando’s fathers had ridden in fields of asphodel, and stony fields, and fields watered by strange rivers, and they had struck many heads of many colours off many shoulders, and brought them back to hang from the rafters. So too would Orlando, he vowed. But since he was sixteen only, and too young to ride with them in Africa or France, he would steal away from his mother and the peacocks in the garden and go to his attic room and there lunge and plunge and slice the air with his blade. Sometimes he cut the cord so that the skull bumped on the floor and he had to string it up again, fastening it with some chivalry almost out of reach so that his enemy grinned at him through shrunk, black lips triumphantly. The skull swung to and fro, for the house, at the top of which he lived, was so vast that there seemed trapped in it the wind itself, blowing this way, blowing that way, winter or summer. The green arras with the hunters on it moved perpetually. His fathers had been noblesince they had been at all. They came out of the northern mists wearing coronets on their heads. Were not the bars of darkness in the room, and the yellow pools which chequered the floor, made by the sun falling through the stained glass of a vast coat of arms in the window? Orlando stood now in the midst of the yellow body of an heraldic leopard. When he put his hand on the window-sill to push the window open, it was instantly coloured red, blue, and yellow like a butterfly’s wing. Thus, those who like symbols, and have a turn for the deciphering of them, might observe that though the shapely legs, the handsome body, and the well-set shoulders were all of them decorated with various tints of heraldic light, Orlando’s face, as he threw the window open, was lit solely by the sun itself. A more candid, sullen face it would be impossible to find. Happy the mother who bears, happier still the biographer who records the life of such a one! Never need she vex herself, nor he invoke the help of novelist or poet. From deed to deed, from glory to glory, from office to office he must go, his scribe following after, till they reach what ever seat it may be that is the height of their desire. Orlando, to look at, was cut out precisely for some such career. The red of the cheeks was covered with peach down; the down on the lips was only a little thicker than the down on the cheeks. The lips themselves were short and slightly drawn back over teeth of an exquisite and almond whiteness. Nothing disturbed the arrowy nose in its short, tense flight; the hair was dark, the ears small, and fitted closely to the head. But, alas, that these catalogues of youthful beauty cannot end without mentioning forehead and eyes. Alas, that people are seldom born devoid of all three; for directly we glance at Orlando standing by the window, we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them; and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which were his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, thus do we rhapsodise. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, we have to admit a thousand disagreeables which it is the aim of every good biographer to ignore. Sights disturbed him, like that of his mother, a very beautiful lady in green walking out to feed the peacocks with Twitchett, her maid, behind her; sights exalted him—the birds and the trees; and made him in love with death—the evening sky, the homing rooks; and so, mounting up the spiral stairway into his brain—which was a roomy one—all these sights, and the garden sounds too, the hammer beating, the wood chopping, began that riot and confusion of the passions and emotions which every good biographer detests. But to continue—Orlando slowly drew in his head, sat down at the table, and, with the half-conscious air of one doing what they do every day of their lives at this hour, took out a writing book labelled “Æthelbert: A Tragedy in Five Acts,” and dipped an old stained goose quill in the ink.
Soon he had covered ten pages and more with poetry. He was fluent, evidently, but he was abstract. Vice, Crime, Misery were the personages of his drama; there were Kings and Queens of impossible territories; horrid plots confounded them; noble sentiments suffused them; there was never a word said as he himself would have said it, but all was turned with a fluency and sweetness which, considering his age—he was not yet seventeen—and that the sixteenth century had still some years of its course to run, were remarkable enough. At last, however, he came to a halt. He was describing, as all young poets are for ever describing, nature, and in order to match the shade of green precisely he looked (and here he showed more audacity than most) at the thing itself, which happened to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window. After that, of course, he could write no more. Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. The shade of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split his metre. Moreover, nature has tricks of her own. Once look out of a window at bees among flowers, at a yawning dog, at the sun setting, once think “how many more suns shall I see set,” etc., etc. (the thought is too well known to be worth writing out) and one drops the pen, takes one’s cloak, strides out of the room, and catches one’s foot on a painted chest as one does so. For Orlando was a trifle clumsy.
Copyright 1928 by Virginia Woolf
Copyright renewed 1956 by Leonard Woolf
Annotated Edition copyright © 2006 by Harcourt, Inc.
Preface copyright © 2005 by Mark Hussey
Introduction copyright © 2006 by Maria DiBattista
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
Table of Contents
| Chapter 113 | ||
| Chapter 265 | ||
| Chapter 3119 | ||
| Chapter 4153 | ||
| Chapter 5227 | ||
| Chapter 6263 | ||
| Index | 331 |