Orlando

Virginia Woolf, 1928

Modernist novels

A playful fictional biography follows a would-be poet through changes of time, identity and social expectation.

Read the book Contents

Listen free: the LibriVox audiobook, read by Cori Samuel.

Length: 6 chapters
Reading time: About 5 hr 30 min
Words: 78,439

About the book

Orlando begins as a sixteen-year-old nobleman with inherited grandeur, a lively imagination and an attachment to writing. The narrator promises the business of biography while repeatedly exposing its difficulties. Even an apparently straightforward account of a life soon becomes a question of selection and interpretation.

Woolf lets historical atmosphere and the conventions of life-writing become material for comedy. The premise allows identity and gender to be explored across changing circumstances. What remains recognisable in a person, and what belongs to the age around them, are questions woven into the storytelling.

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Modernist novels

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. Virginia Woolf died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK. Includes the original dedication, preface, frontispiece.