Once described as the 'longest and most charming love-letter in literature', the Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" is edited by Brenda Lyons with an ...Show synopsisOnce described as the 'longest and most charming love-letter in literature', the Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" is edited by Brenda Lyons with an introduction and notes by Sandra M. Gilbert in "Penguin Classics". Written for Virginia Woolf's intimate friend, the charismatic writer Vita Sackville-West, "Orlando" is a playful mock 'biography' of a chameleonic historical figure, immortal and ageless, who changes sex and identity on a whim. 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 ambiguity and capriciousness. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers, which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from "Mrs Dalloway" (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel "The Waves" (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive "Orlando" (1928) and "A Room of One's Own" (1929) a passionate feminist essay. If you enjoyed "Orlando", you might like Woolf's "The Waves", also available in "Penguin Modern Classics". "I read this book and believed it was a hallucinogenic, interactive biography of my own life and future". (Tilda Swinton).Hide synopsis
Orlando: A Biography – Mass-market paperback
(1995)
by Virginia Woolf, Merry M. Pawlowski (Introduction and notes by), Dr. Keith Carabine (Series edited by)
Wordsworth Editions Ltd
New edition. New edition.
ISBN: 1853262390
ISBN-13: 9781853262395
Description:Very Good- in Fair jacket. Book Orange cloth book in original...Very Good- in Fair jacket. Book Orange cloth book in original jacket. Slight fading to to cloth boards at margins. Quarter-sized to lower left front board with the same on rear board. Darkening to top inch of spine. Some foxing to page edges and endpapers. Jacket has half-dollar sized chips to spine ends of jacket and two more to back panel of jacket. Darkening to jacket spine and to front panel of jacket.
Publisher: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square,
Description:Very Good in Very Good jacket. Book. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. 1928...Very Good in Very Good jacket. Book. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. 1928 First Edition, Third Impression. Size octavo, 8.75" x 5.25", 299 pages including index. Orange cloth covered boards with gilt titles to the spine, with the dust jacket. Condition very good, corners bumped, indentation to front end-paper, else pages very clean throughout, no marks or inscriptions. Dust jacket condition very good, a long closed tear and a short closed tear to upper edge front panel, small tear to lower edge front panel, edges rubbed with small chips, top edge of spine chipped with loss bottom edge of spine with a little chipping and short closed tear, spine slightly sunned, not price clipped. With glossy frontispiece portrait of Orlando as a boy, and further glossy portraits throughout. A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's intimate friend Vita Sackville-West.
Description:Frontispiece. Near Fine in Near Very Good jacket. First...Frontispiece. Near Fine in Near Very Good jacket. First American Edition. Original blue cloth, gilt titles on spine, near fine. No bookplates, writing, or signatures. In near very good dust jacket with some minor chipping to spine ends, flap corners modestly clipped. Frontispiece.
Description:First American trade edition. Fine in a spine-tanned, very good...First American trade edition. Fine in a spine-tanned, very good dustwrapper with small nicks and tears. A fantasy biography of transgendered Orlando, living alternately as male and female through four centuries. Made into a Sally Potter film in 1992 with Quentin Crisp(! ) as Queen Elizabeth I. See this book in 3D on our site.
Description:Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine gilt. Extremities...Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine gilt. Extremities rubbed, spine darkened, a few small marks to cloth, internally clean. A very good copy. First edition, first impression. From the library of the prominent composer, memoirist and suffragette Ethel Smyth, with her annotations and a later gift inscription from her, "For Elizabeth (Williamson) who made me read this wonderful book again, from Ethel Smyth, Jan 1931". Ethel Smyth first met Woolf in February 1930; she had just read A Room of One's Own, and hunted down its author as a potential fighter for the suffragette cause. This was the beginning of a close and complex friendship that would exert an immense influence on the lives of both women; Smyth, a rambunctious septuagenarian, and the younger Woolf, a slight and subtle-minded genius, were fixed in a state of mutual awe. In a letter dated Oct 12 1940, Woolf recounted to Smyth her memory of how at a concert in November 1919, long before they ever met, she had first seen her, "coming bustling down the gangway at the Wigmore Hall, in tweeds and spats, a little cock's feather in your felt, and a general look of angry energy, so that I said, 'That's Ethel Smyth! ' – and felt, being then a mere chit, she belongs to the great achieved public world, where I'm a nonentity. You reminded me of a ptarmigan – those speckled birds with fetlocks." As for Smyth, she soon fell madly in love with Virginia Woolf, who wrote to Quentin Bell (resorting again to an animal comparison), "It is like being caught by a giant crab". In spite of this initial awkwardness, Woolf respected and loved Smyth for her honesty and robustness, and when Smyth's passion calmed, (though it never cooled) the two developed a deep friendship, and in their letters they frankly discussed everything from religion and culture to masturbation and suicide. Smyth was the inspiration for the character Miss La Trobe in Woolf's Between the Acts, and their ardent discussions about the relationship between literature and music no doubt had an influence upon The Waves. The Years, also, has a Smythean origin, as it derived its inspiration in part from speeches made in 1931 by both Woolf and Smyth at the London National Society for Women's Service, on the subject of professions for women. Ethel Smyth outlived the much younger Virginia, at whose death, when asked by Raymond Mortimer for a comment, she mournfully refused, "I had to say I couldn't, touched as I was by his suggesting it. Later perhaps-but my god not now. You see it was not only that I loved her; it was that my life [was] literally based on her."
Description:Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the...Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Bookseller's blind stamp to front free endpaper. Spotting to edges, endpapers toned, three small chips from the free endpapers also affecting the front pastedown. An excellent copy in the beautiful dust jacket with only a few small nicks and short splits. First edition, first impression. A lovely copy in a superb example of the dust jacket.
Description:Crosby Gaige: NY 1928. Illus, 9x8", gilt-dec black cloth, 333 w...Crosby Gaige: NY 1928. Illus, 9x8", gilt-dec black cloth, 333 w/index, extremities worn, one corner bumped, spine faded else v.g. FIRST EDITION, LOMITED TO 500 NUMBERED COPIES, SIGNED BY VIRGINIA WOOLF. Typography by Frederic Warde.
Description:First edition, number 567 of 861 copies, signed by the author....First edition, number 567 of 861 copies, signed by the author. Black cloth, spine decoratively stamped and titled in gilt and with Crosby Gaige ram cartouche to front board. Spine slightly sunned, minor wear to spine tips, overall near fine in custom mylar cover. Signed in purple ink by Virginia Woolf.
Description:Signed by Author(s) The First edition. Limited to 800 copies [of...Signed by Author(s) The First edition. Limited to 800 copies [of a total run of 861] printed on pure rag paper & signed by Virginia Woolf at the colophon in purple ink. Elegant typography design by Frederic Warde. Preceding all other Trade editions. Publisher's attractive, elaborately gilt-decorated black cloth binding, patterned in gold on the spine in six panels, lettered in gold in the second panel. Very neat contemporary well designed small bookplate on the front pastedown. A fine, bright faultless example. Woolf's amazing fictitious history of four centuries of transgender "biography" about a mythical being named Orlando who starts life as an Elizabethan nobleman who transforms into a woman poet of vast social insight. Written for & inspired by Woolf's friend, & lover [possibly], Vita Sackville-West, to whom the book was dedicated. Considering her time, an extraordinarily courageous achievement in English letters & fantastic literature. Basis for the splendid Sally Potter 1993 film starring Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane et al. TBCL. Kirkpatrick A11a. * Custom black cloth TBCL slipcase in very fine condition.
Description:First edition, preceding the English trade edition. Fine with...First edition, preceding the English trade edition. Fine with none of the usual spine fading, and the only example we have seen in the original unprinted deep purple glassine dustwrapper, that has some minor chipping, mostly on the rear panel. One of 861 numbered copies Signed by the author. A fantasy biography of transgendered Orlando, living alternately as male and female through four centuries. Made into a Sally Potter film in 1992 with Tilda Swinton in the title role and Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth I. A rarity in jacket. See this book in 3D on our site.
