Orlando A Biograghy

Virginia Woolf is one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century and Orlando is one of her most unique and fantastic works. The protagonist, Orlando, begins the novel as a young sixteenth century aristocrat and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I. She gives him an estate and orders him never to grow old. We then follow Orlando through the centuries, as he crisscrosses the world, falls in love, and becomes a woman. Profound and comic, Orlando is Woolf's deepest investigation of gender roles.

Annotation

A fictional biography--spanning three centuries in the life of an Elizabethan nobleman who becomes a woman.

Editorial Reviews

One of the most talented and original novelists in English literature, Virginia Woolf was born Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882 to a prominent English family. Her father was the eminent critic Leslie Stephen, and though Woolf received little in the way of formal education, she read avidly from her father's extensive book collection. Despite the material comforts enjoyed by her family, Woolf's childhood was a traumatic one. She suffered through a period of sexual abuse and endured the early deaths of both her mother and brother. For the rest of her life she would be afflicted by mental illness and periods of extreme depression.

Woolf moved with her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, to London in 1904 where she met regularly with many of England's finest young artists and intellectuals. "The Bloomsbury Group," as they would come to be known, included Woolf, fellow novelist E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, Benjamin Britten and the economist John Maynard Keynes, among others. This vibrant intellectual community proved important to Woolf's maturation as a thinker and an artist as she embarked upon what would be one of the most remarkable writing careers in English history. It also was important to her personally, as she married fellow Bloomsburian Leonard Woolf in 1912.

Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915 to enthusiastic critical reviews. In 1917 she and Leonard founded the Hogarth Press, a house that would publish many striking and original novels including her own later masterpieces. Woolf followed up The Voyage Out with Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). However, it was with the publication of her next few novels, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and The Waves (1931) that Woolf established herself as one of the most important and innovative novelists in the English-speaking world. Woolf was strongly influenced by the experimental, groundbreaking work of fellow novelist James Joyce, and both artists pushed the novel in new directions towards a fuller representation of inner experience. Woolf's later works of fiction included The Years (1937) and Between the Acts (1941).

Woolf was also a prolific essayist, and during the course of her career she published over 500 essays in various periodicals. Her most well-known work of nonfiction is 1929's A Room of One's Own, which discusses the role of women writers in the history of English letters and has since become a classic of literary criticism and feminist theory. Woolf suffered through bouts of depression throughout her life, including a number of acute breakdowns. Sensing the onset of another breakdown, Woolf drowned herself in 1941.

About The Author:

About The Author:

Virginia Woolf is now recognized as a major twentieth-century author, a great novelist and essayist and a key figure in literary history as a feminist and a modernist. Born in 1882, she was the daughter of the editor and critic Leslie Stephen, and suffered a traumatic adolescence after the deaths of her mother, in 1895, and her stepsister Stella, in 1897, leaving her subject to breakdowns for the rest of her life. Her father died in 1904 and two years later her favorite brother Thoby died suddenly of typhoid. With her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, she was drawn into the company of writers and artists such as Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, later known as the Bloomsbury Group. Among them she met Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1912, and together they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917, which was to publish the work of T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and Katherine Mansfield as well as the earliest translations of Freud. Woolf lived an energetic life among friends and family, reviewing and...

Name:Virginia Woolf

Also Known As:Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf (full name)

Date of Birth:January 25, 1882

Place of Birth:London

Date of Death:March 28, 1941

Place of Death:Sussex, England

Education:Home schooling

Biography

Virginia Woolf is now recognized as a major twentieth-century author, a great novelist and essayist and a key figure in literary history as a feminist and a modernist. Born in 1882, she was the daughter of the editor and critic Leslie Stephen, and suffered a traumatic adolescence after the deaths of her mother, in 1895, and her stepsister Stella, in 1897, leaving her subject to breakdowns for the rest of her life. Her father died in 1904 and two years later her favorite brother Thoby died suddenly of typhoid. With her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, she was drawn into the company of writers and artists such as Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, later known as the Bloomsbury Group. Among them she met Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1912, and together they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917, which was to publish the work of T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and Katherine Mansfield as well as the earliest translations of Freud. Woolf lived an energetic life among friends and family, reviewing and writing, and dividing her time between London and the Sussex Downs. In 1941, fearing another attack of mental illness, she drowned herself.

Her first novel, The Voyage Out, appeared in 1915, and she then worked through the transitional Night and Day (1919) to the highly experimental and impressionistic Jacob's Room (1922). From then on her fiction became a series of brilliant and extraordinarily varied experiments, each one searching for a fresh way of presenting the relationship between individual lives and the forces of society and history. She was particularly concerned with women's experience, not only in her novels but also in her essays and her two books of feminist polemic, A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). Her major novels include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), the historical fantasy Orlando (1928), written for Vita Sackville-West, the extraordinarily poetic vision of The Waves (1931), the family saga of The Years (1937), and Between the Acts (1941).

Author biography courtesy of Penguin Group (USA).