Orlando: A Biography Paperback - 2006
by Virginia Woolf; Mark Hussey; Introduction by Maria DiBattista
Summary
Annotated and with an introduction by Maria DiBattista
From the rear cover
"Undoubtedly Virginia Woolf s most intense and one of the most singular (novels) of our era."--Jorge Luis Borges
Begun as a "joke," "Orlando" is Virginia Woolf's 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 novel's end a married woman in the year 1928. Part love letter to Vita Sackville-West, part exploration of the art of biography, "Orlando" is one of Woolf's most popular and entertaining works. This new annotated edition will deepen readers' understanding of Woolf's brilliant creation.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, transformed the art of the novel. The author of numerous novels, collections of letters, journals, and short stories, she was an admired literary critic and a master of the essay form.
Mark Hussey, general editor of Harcourt's annotated Woolf series, is professor of English at Pace University in New York City and editor of the Woolf Studies Annual.
Maria DiBattista, professor of English and comparative literature at Princeton University, has written numerous articles on modern literature and film. Her books include "Virginia Woolf: The Fables of Anon, First Love: The Affections of Modern Fiction," and, as coeditor and contributor, " High and Low Moderns: British Literature and Culture 1889-1939." Her most recent book is "Fast Talking Dames."
"
Details
- Title Orlando: A Biography
- Author Virginia Woolf; Mark Hussey; Introduction by Maria DiBattista
- Binding Paperback
- Edition [ Edition: First
- Pages 384
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Mariner Books, Wilmington, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
- Date 2006-07-03
- Illustrated Yes
- Features Annotated, Bibliography, Illustrated, Table of Contents
- ISBN 9780156031516 / 0156031515
- Weight 0.7 lbs (0.32 kg)
- Dimensions 7.9 x 5.2 x 1 in (20.07 x 13.21 x 2.54 cm)
- Ages 14 to UP years
- Grade levels 9 - UP
-
Themes
- Cultural Region: British
- Sex & Gender: Feminine
- Sex & Gender: Gay
- Sex & Gender: Lesbian
- Topical: Lgbt
- Library of Congress subjects Sex role, England
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 2005037769
- Dewey Decimal Code FIC
Excerpt
HEFOR THERE could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise itwas in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando’s father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.
Orlando’s fathers had ridden in fields of asphodel, and stony fields, and fields watered by strange rivers, and they had struck many heads of many colours off many shoulders, and brought them back to hang from the rafters. So too would Orlando, he vowed. But since he was sixteen only, and too young to ride with them in Africa or France, he would steal away from his mother and the peacocks in the garden and go to his attic room and there lunge and plunge and slice the air with his blade. Sometimes he cut the cord so that the skull bumped on the floor and he had to string it up again, fastening it with some chivalry almost out of reach so that his enemy grinned at him through shrunk, black lips triumphantly. The skull swung to and fro, for the house, at the top of which he lived, was so vast that there seemed trapped in it the wind itself, blowing this way, blowing that way, winter or summer. The green arras with the hunters on it moved perpetually. His fathers had been noble since they had been at all. They came out of the northern mists wearing coronets on their heads. Were not the bars of darkness in the room, and the yellow pools which chequered the floor, made by the sun falling through the stained glass of a vast coat of arms in the window? Orlando stood now in the midst of the yellow body of an heraldic leopard. When he put his hand on the window-sill to push the window open, it was instantly coloured red, blue, and yellow like a butterfly’s wing. Thus, those who like symbols, and have a turn for the deciphering of them, might observe that though the shapely legs, the handsome body, and the well-set shoulders were all of them decorated with various tints of heraldic light, Orlando’s face, as he threw the window open, was lit solely by the sun itself. A more candid, sullen face it would be impossible to find. Happy the mother who bears, happier still the biographer who records the life of such a one! Never need she vex herself, nor he invoke the help of novelist or poet. From deed to deed, from glory to glory, from office to office he must go, his scribe following after, till they reach what ever seat it may be that is the height of their desire. Orlando, to look at, was cut out precisely for some such career. The red of the cheeks was covered with peach down; the down on the lips was only a little thicker than the down on the cheeks. The lips themselves were short and slightly drawn back over teeth of an exquisite and almond whiteness. Nothing disturbed the arrowy nose in its short, tense flight; the hair was dark, the ears small, and fitted closely to the head. But, alas, that these catalogues of youthful beauty cannot end without mentioning forehead and eyes. Alas, that people are seldom born devoid of all three; for directly we glance at Orlando standing by the window, we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them; and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which were his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, thus do we rhapsodise. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, we have to admit a thousand disagreeables which it is the aim of every good biographer to ignore. Sights disturbed him, like that of his mother, a very beautiful lady in green walking out to feed the peacocks with Twitchett, her maid, behind her; sights exalted himthe birds and the trees; and made him in love with deaththe evening sky, the homing rooks; and so, mounting up the spiral stairway into his brainwhich was a roomy oneall these sights, and the garden sounds too, the hammer beating, the wood chopping, began that riot and confusion of the passions and emotions which every good biographer detests. But to continueOrlando slowly drew in his head, sat down at the table, and, with the half-conscious air of one doing what they do every day of their lives at this hour, took out a writing book labelled Æthelbert: A Tragedy in Five Acts,” and dipped an old stained goose quill in the ink.
Copyright renewed 1956 by Leonard Woolf
Annotated Edition copyright © 2006 by Harcourt, Inc.
Preface copyright © 2005 by Mark Hussey
Introduction copyright © 2006 by Maria DiBattista
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
Media reviews
Citations
- Library Journal, 08/15/2006, Page 131
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