Orlando (Aziloth Books) - Couverture souple

Woolf, Virginia

 
9781907523687: Orlando (Aziloth Books)

Synopsis

'Orlando' is a historical fantasy in which the eponymous hero remains alive for over three centuries, but ages physically just 36 years. Over this huge span of time, Orlando has many strange adventures, chief among them being his sex-change from a man to a woman. Woolf uses this bizarre and intriguing notion to examine many aspects of human existence: the difference between fact and imagination; the utility of poetry and art; how humans conform to whatever civilization of group they find themselves in; and (a central theme of the book) the gender roles which society imposes so unjustly upon men and women, when - in Woolf's view - the two sexes have in reality very similar dreams and aspirations.

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Biographie de l'auteur

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography. After his death in 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture.

In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. Three years later, her first novel The Voyage Out was published, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). These first novels show the development of Virginia Woolf's distinctive and innovative narrative style. It was during this time that she and Leonard Woolf founded The Hogarth Press with the publication of the co-authored Two Stories in 1917, hand-printed in the dining room of their house in Surrey.

Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay. This intense creative productivity was often matched by periods of mental illness, from which she had suffered since her mother's death in 1895. On 28 March 1941, a few months before the publication of her final novel, Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf committed suicide.

Quatrième de couverture

WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY PETER ACKROYD AND MARGARET REYNOLDS

'Undoubtedly Virginia Woolf's most intense and one of the most singular novels of our era' Jorge Luis Borges

As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge, but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart.

The Vintage Classics Virginia Woolf series has been curated by Jeanette Winterson and Margaret Reynolds, and the texts used are based on the original Hogarth Press editions published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

See also: Jacob's Room

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