Orlando

About Orlando

A collectible hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf’s pioneering novel about a time-traveling sixteenth-century nobleman who wakes up in the body of a woman, with a new foreword by Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

“A brilliant book that teaches you so much about identity and love—all these fundamental questions that we ask ourselves.” —Emma Corrin

“I read this book and believed it was a hallucinogenic, interactive biography of my own life and future.” —Tilda Swinton

A Penguin Vitae Edition

First masculine, then feminine, Orlando is a young sixteenth-century nobleman who gallops through the centuries, from Elizabethan England and imperial Turkey to Virginia Woolf’s own time. Will he find happiness with the exotic Russian Princess Sasha? Or is the dashing explorer Shelmerdine the ideal man? And what form will Orlando take on the journey—a nobleman, traveler, writer? Man or . . . woman?
 
Written for the charismatic, bisexual writer Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is one of Woolf’s most popular and accessible novels, a playful mock biography of a chameleon-like historical figure that is both a wry commentary on gender and, in Woolf’s own words, a “writer’s holiday” that delights in its ambiguity and capriciousness.

This edition is collated from all known proofs, manuscripts, and impressions to reflect the author’s intentions, and includes an illuminating introduction and notes by the distinguished scholar and coauthor of The Madwoman in the Attic Sandra M. Gibert.

Penguin Vitae—loosely translated as “Penguin of one’s life”—is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.