Biography

Bell, Quentin. "June 1925-December 1928." In his Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Vol. II, pp. 109-40. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

Covers the period during which Woolf conceived of, wrote, and published Orlando.

Pippett, Aileen. The Moth and the Star: A Biography of Virginia Woolf Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1955, 368 p.

Includes an account of the writing of Orlando and initial response to the novel.

Criticism

Alexander, Jean. "Orlando." In her The Venture of Form in the Novels of Virginia Woolf, pp. 127-46. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1974.

Discusses symbol and structure in Orlando within the context of Woolf's career.

Baldanza, Frank. "Orlando and the Sackvilles." PMLA LXX, No. 1 (March 1955): 274-79.

Draws parallels between the "biography" of Orlando and the history of the Sackville family.

Blackstone, Bernard. "Orlando (1928)." In his Virginia Woolf A Commentary, pp. 131-38. London: Hogarth Press, 1949.

Plot summary and interpretation.

Gorsky, Susan Rubinow. "People and Characters." In her Virginia Woolf, pp. 67-96. Boston: Twayne, 1978.

Discusses Orlando in a survey of Woolf's novels that treat "the problem of how to write about a person (living or dead, real or fictitious)," including Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, Roger Fry, and Flush.

Green, David Bonnell. "Orlando and the Sackvilles: Addendum." PMLA, LXXI, No. I (March 1956): 268-69.

Links the sex change in Orlando to the extinction of the male line of Sackville heirs and the inheritance of the family estate into the female line, the Sackville-Wests.

Hoffman, Charles G. "Fact and Fantasy in Orlando: Virginia Woolf's Manuscript Revisions." Texas Studies in Literature and Language X, No. 3 (Fall 1968): 435-44.

Contrasts the manuscript version of Orlando with the published version, noting differences "which are worth examining because they help clarify Virginia Woolf's intentions, particularly in relation to the various aspects of Orlando's character and the history of the Sackville family."

Holtby, Winifred. "Two in a Taxi." In her Virginia Woolf pp. 161-85. London: Wishart & Co., 1932.

Summarizes and explicates Orlando and compares its consideration of literature, time, and sex with that in A Room of One's Own (1929). According to Holtby: "Different as they are in form, the two books are complementary. Orlando dramatizes the theories stated more plainly in the essay. The essay makes clear the meaning of the allegory."

Johnson, Manly. "Orlando and The Waves." In his Virginia Woolf, pp. 77-91. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1973.

Summarizes the plot of Orlando and comments: "Despite its capriciousness, Orlando is a substantial work of fiction. The impressionistic rendering of three centuries of English manners and literary history would alone give it a permanent interest. But in addition, it offers felicities of style, delights of parody, and thematic subtleties."

Kushen, Betty. "'Dreams of Golden Domes': Manic Fusion in Virginia Woolf's Orlando." Literature and Psychology 29, Nos. 1-2 (1979): 25-33.

Examines the significance and success of Woolf's movement from "a predominantly depressive position in To the Lighthouse, a meditation in mourning of the lost Mrs. Ramsay, to an overtly manic effort in Orlando, an attempt at dazzling exuberance."

Love, Jean O. "Orlando and Its Genesis: Venturing and Experimenting in Art, Love, and Sex." In Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity, edited by Ralph Freedman, pp. 189-218. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980.

Recounts Woolf's relationship with Vita Sackville-West and its literary record in Orlando.

Moore, Madeline. "Virginia Woof's Orlando: An Edition of the Manuscript." Twentieth-Century Literature 25, Nos. 3-4 (Fall/Winter 1979): 303-55.

Includes introductory commentary, manuscript text, and letters by Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Harold Nicolson regarding Orlando.

Philipson, Morris. "Virginia Woolf's Orlando: Biography as a Work of Fiction." In From Parnassus.: Essays in Honor of Jacques Barzun, edited by Dora B. Weiner and William R. Keylor, pp. 237-48. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

Discusses Woolf's artistic strategy in Orlando, defining the basis of the work as "two extended metaphors, one regarding longevity and the other sexuality. Both are employed in order to demonstrate formative influences, to arrive at an understanding of the essence of the subject of the biography—poetically."

Richter, Harvena. "Three Modes of Time." In her Virginia Woolf: The Inward Voyage, pp. 149-79. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.

Examines Woolf's manipulation of time in Orlando, The Waves, and The Years.

Roessel, David. "The Significance of Constantinople in Orlando." Papers on Language & Literature 28, No. 4 (Fall 1992): 398-416.

Suggests that the significance of Constantinople in the lives and works of Woolf and Vita Sackville-West and in political events of the 1920s led Woolf to situate Orlando's sex change in that city.

Rosenthal, Michael. "Orlando." In his Virginia Woolf pp. 128-41. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.

Maintains that "Orlando's discovery of her essential artistic self marks the appropriate conclusion for a book which is finally less concerned with Vita Sackville-West than with depicting Woolf's own sense of the workings of the creative imagination.… The strains of parody, biography, and satire fall away and Woolf is left, as always, endorsing the life-giving energies of art."

Rubenstein, Roberta. "Orlando: Virginia Woolf's Improvisations on a Russian Theme." Forum for Modern Language Studies IX, No. 2 (April 1973): 166-69.

Cites Orlando's romance with Sasha as an allegorical representation of Woolf's fascination with Russia and Russian literature.

Sackville-West, Vita. "Virginia Woolf and Orlando." The Listener 53 (27 January 1955): 157-58.

Traces the writing of Orlando through personal letters and includes an excised portion of the original manuscript.

Steele, Philip L. "Virginia Woolf's Spiritual Autobiography." Topic IX (Fall 1969): 64-74.

Suggests that "Orlando is Woolf's spirit, her sensibility, set down in a confused and tumultuous world trying to discover the reality, the value, the meaning of life. The world with which Virginia Woolf had to come to terms, as the world of an intellectual, spanned several centuries of life and literature. All the ideas, the alternatives, the questions with which she wrestled in moving between isolation and society, masculine or feminine attitudes, romanticism or restraint in writing, are projected into the four centuries of Orlando's career."

Stewart, Jack F. "Historical Impressionism in Orlando." Studies in the Novel V, No. 1 (Spring 1973): 71-85.

Relates Woolf's subjective treatment of history in Orlando to the impressionist style in painting. According to Stewart, "As impressionist painters like Monet tried to catch the play of sunlight transfusing objects, as pointillists like Seurat created a porous texture out of stipple dots, so Virginia Woolf highlights the flow of historical consciousness by dissolving the tyranny of time, accelerating change, and breaking the bonds of nuclear biography."

Whittemore, Reed. "Biography and Literature." Sewanee Review C, No. 3 (Summer 1992): 382-96.

Considers the significance of Orlando in the development of modern biography.

Wilson, J. J. "Why Is Orlando Difficult?" In New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf, edited by Jane Marcus, pp. 170-84. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.

Defines Orlando as an anti-novel. According to Wilson, "Of the many genres into which Orlando could fit (Bildungsroman, picaresque, quest novel, satire, fantasy, fairy story, contephilosophique, feminist pamphlet, literary history, or even that which it purports to be, a biography), the anti-novel seems the least Procrustean and describes best its origins and functions."

Additional coverage of Woolf s life and career is contained in the following sources published by Gale Research: Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, 1914-1945; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 104, 130; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 36, 100; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Documentary Series, Vol. 10; DISCovering Autbors, Major 20th-Century Writers, Sbort Story Criticism, Vol. 7; Twentietb-Century Literary Criticism, Vols. 1, 5, 20, 43; and World Literature Criticism.