Virginia Woolf's fantastical novel about an Elizabethan nobleman who lives for three centuries
and transitions into a woman with a new introduction by Carmen Maria Machado. The long-lived
protagonist of Orlando begins as a passionate teenage aristocrat whose days are spent in rowdy
revelry at the colorful Tudor court of Queen Elizabeth and his nights in writing earnest
poetry. A favorite of the elderly queen he falls in love with and is jilted by a wayward
Russian princess. Two kings later now in his thirties Orlando is sent to serve as ambassador
to Constantinople where he awakens one day to find himself in the body of a woman. The Lady
Orlando takes this circumstance in stride. She returns to England engages in love affairs with
both men and women consorts with the famous poets of each age finds happiness with a
gender-nonconforming husband and at last achieves publication of her own epic poem in the year
1928. A playful and exuberant romp through history Orlando is Woolf’s most lighthearted and
unusual novel. VINTAGE CLASSICS.
