Written for Virginia Woolf's intimate friend, the charismatic,
bisexual writer Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a playful
mock 'biography' of a chameleon-like historical figure who changes
sex and identity at will. 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 its ambiguity and
capriciousness.
