Orlando, A Biography Virginia Woolf - Begun as a joke, Orlando is Virginia Woolfs fantastical biography of a poet who first appears as a sixteen-year-old boy at the court of Elizabeth I, and is left at the novels end a married woman in the year 1928. From Orlandos early days as a page in the Elizabethan court, through first love, heartbreak, and gender transformation, we follow Woolfs protagonist across centuries, through adventures in Constantinople and friendship with the poet Alexander Pope. All along, Orlando pursues literary success with her long poem, The Oak Tree. Part love letter to Vita Sackville-West, part exploration of the art of biography, Orlando is one of Woolfs most enduringly popular and entertaining works. It has inspired a number of adaptions, including a film version starring Tilda Swinton. This edition, annotated and with an introduction by Maria DiBattista, author of Imagining Virginia Woolf, will deepen readers understanding of Woolfs brilliant creation.

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Adeline Virginia Woolf (/wlf née Stephen; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child in a blended family of eight which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. Her mother was Julia Prinsep Jackson and her father Leslie Stephen. While the boys in the family received college educations, the girls were home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. An important influence in Virginia Woolf's early life was the summer home the family used in St Ives, Cornwall, where she first saw the Godrevy Lighthouse, which was to become central to her novel To the Lighthouse (1927).