Orlando by Virginia Woolf 1928: film 1992 Sally Potter:

Orlando: A Biography

1st edition cover

1st edition cover
Orlando
by
Virginia Woolf
eBooks@Adelaide
2004

VIRGINIA WOOLF.
Orlando. 1928.
"And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 & continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to another."
Virginia Woolf, from her diary entry for October 5, 1927.
"But listen; suppose Orlando turns out to be Vita; and its [sic] all about you and the lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind. . . . Shall you mind?"
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, October 9, 1927.

TO V. SACKVILLE–WEST.
Table of Contents
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1.
CHAPTER 2.
CHAPTER 3.
CHAPTER 4.
CHAPTER 5.
CHAPTER 6.

Orlando (1928)


The Hogarth Press was born in the dining room of the home of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (Hogarth House) in Richmond, Surrey. It was devised largely as a hobby for its owners, with whose literary views it was closely identified; but their standing as writers and critics of substance meant that the small press, concerned more with standards than with profit, attracted a reputation for quality that brought the imprint renown.

In 1924 the Press moved to more substantial premises in Tavistock Square in London. Between 1921, when Virginia Woolf's Monday or Tuesday was launched, and 1938, thirty-three titles are listed in the Annals of English Literature 1475-1950, all of high quality, though the first pamphlet was published in 1917. The press became a self-supporting business with a high reputation, particularly in the area of literature. It became an allied company of Chatto and Windus in 1946. By that time, if pamphlets and little series of essays are included, 527 titles had appeared. Apart from writers either famous or later to become so, such as T.S. Eliot, Robert Graves, Katherine Mansfield, C. Day Lewis and Virginia Woolf herself, issues such as disarmament, the League of Nations, educational reform and racial prejudice were tackled. Hogarth was recognized as a foremost publisher of challenging new ideas and major writing. The Press retained this reputation after the alliance with Chatto and Windus.

Seven psycho-analytic works, including Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920a), Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921c) and the first volume of his Collected Papers, were translated from the German under the editorship of Ernest Jones, assisted by James Strachey and published in Britain between 1921 and 1924. But in that year, negotiations were completed with the Hogarth Press, who added the seven numbers of what was entitled The International Psycho-Analytical Library to its list. A partnership was struck with the Institute of Psycho-Analysis in London, who became co-publishers, Leonard Woolf retaining a right of veto, though there is no record that this was ever exercised.

The Library accepted for publication only works of the highest standard, most of which were kept in print for long periods. Karl Abraham, Sandor Ferenczi, Anna Freud and Heinz Hartmann were among its many distinguished authors. The enterprise was so successful that Leonard Woolf agreed to publish a Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud in a new translation under the general editorship of James Strachey, with the collaboration of Anna Freud and the assistance of Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. The first of twenty-four volumes appeared in 1953 and the last in 1966. The whole is a triumph of scholarship, with extensive notes and editorial introductions: no comparable collection of Freud exists anywhere in the world. Woolf is said to have described the decision to publish the work, with understatement, as "rather fortuitous."

Unhappily, for reasons that have never been fully disclosed, the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, against the wishes of the then editor of the International Library, Clifford Yorke, decided to discontinue the Library, and the last of the series, number 118, Freud's Self-Analysis by Didier Anzieu, was published in 1986. However, the link with Hogarth as co-publishers of the Standard Edition, which has maintained its international success, continues. A new edition is now planned, with a scholarly update of Strachey's editorial apparatus, with additional papers by Freud that were either unknown or unavailable at the time of the first edition, with new refinements. In this venture, the American publisher Norton will join the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. It will be two or three years before the new edition is ready for publication.

The Hogarth Press has maintained its identity, together with Chatto and Windus, even though it is now part of the Random House publishing group.


—CLIFFORD YORKE

Orlando is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. It is generally considered one of the most accessible novels by Virginia Woolf, and is one of the most influential books written by a female author, mixing fiction with biography. Eventually, a project on the history of women's writing in the British Isles was named after the book. A film adaptation of the novel was made in 1992, starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando and Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth I: see Orlando (film).


Plot

Orlando tells the story of a young man named Orlando, born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, who decides not to grow old. He does not, and he passes through the ages as a young man ... until he wakes up one morning to find that he has metamorphosed into a woman -- the same person, with the same personality and intellect, but in a woman's body. The remaining centuries up to the time the book was written are seen through a woman's eyes.

Conceptual history

Apart from being, at the beginning of the book, a knightly young man, ready for adventure, Woolf's Orlando takes little from the eponymous legendary hero of the Italian Renaissance.

Orlando can be read as a roman à clef: the characters Orlando and Princess Sasha in the novel refer to Vita Sackville-West and Violet Trefusis respectively (see: 2nd section of "Violet Trefusis" article). The photographs printed in the illustrated editions of the text are all of the real Vita Sackville-West. Her husband, Harold Nicolson, appears in the novel as Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine. "The Oak Tree", the poem written by Orlando in the novel, refers to the poem "The Land", for which Vita had won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927.

For historical details Woolf draws extensively from Knole and the Sackvilles, a book written (and reworked in several versions) by Vita, describing the historic backgrounds of her ancestral home, Knole House in Kent. Other historical details derive from John Dryden's Essay of Dramatick Poesie. (Orlando, personified as one of Vita's ancestors - the 6th Earl of Dorset - discusses artistic topics with his contemporaries as described in that book.) Orlando is also an attractive version of a history book on the Sackvilles' noble descendants, their estates, their culture, etc; Woolf was middle-class and fascinated by the aristocracy, as embodied in Vita. (Vita also wrote about these subjects, but Woolf thought Vita had a "pen of brass").

The conventions of fiction and fantasy (e.g., fictional names and a main character who lives through many centuries) allowed Woolf to write a well-documented biography of a person living in her own age, without opening herself to criticism about controversial topics such as lesbian love. While Orlando was published in the same year as The Well of Loneliness, a novel banned in the UK for its lesbian theme, it escaped censorship because the main character appears as a man when he loves Princess Sasha.

Vita's mother was not pleased at the writing of the novel, because she believed the story was too plain in its meaning, and she would call Woolf the "virgin wolf" henceforth. Violet Trefusis's reply would be a more conventional roman à clef (Broderie Anglaise), which loses much of its interest if the reader does not know the background, whereas Orlando remains a captivating novel, even if the reader does not know the identity of the person in the photographs in the book.

Orlando: A Biography was described as an elaborate love letter from Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West (by the latter's son Nigel Nicolson); nonetheless, Woolf intended her novel as the first in a new trend, breaking the boundaries between what are traditionally seen as the fiction and non-fiction genres in literature (so the novel is not only about trans-gender, but also trans-genre, so to speak).[citation needed] This was not to be, however, as the book is invariably called a "novel" (while Woolf called it a "biography"), and is shelved in the "fiction" section of libraries and bookshops. Only in the last decades of the 20th century would authors again try this "tricky" cross-over genre (which differs from "romanticised" or "popularised" non-fiction, and does not necessarily have to take a roman à clef form) , e.g., Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (ISBN 0-330-28976-4).



小说： 1、《奥兰多》（《Orlando》）1928年

译者: 林燕 2003

作者: [英]弗吉尼亚·吴尔夫/Virginia Woolf

简介 ：

　　奥兰多的故事，始于十六世纪伊丽莎白时代，终于一九二入年吴尔夫搁笔的“现时”，历时四百年。奥兰多先是一位天真无邪的贵族少年，因深受伊丽莎白女王 宠幸而进入宫廷。詹姆斯王登基后，大霜冻降临，奥兰多偶一位俄罗斯公主，坠入情网，结果是失恋亦失宠，隐居乡间大宅。奥兰多从小迷恋文学和诗歌，莎士比亚 的身影令他难以忘怀，设法与小有名气的诗人格林相识，不料又受戏弄，加之不堪忍受罗马尼亚女大公的纠缠，遂请缨出使士耳其……


"Clothes have more important offices than merely to keep us warm; they change our view of the world and the world's view of us."
--ORLANDO (VIRGINIA WOOLF)



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BBC Culture

"This was my do or die film."

Sally Potter talks about the challenges behind making her hit movie Orlando.

Orlando
Promotional poster

ORLANDO at Young Centre for the Performing Arts (50 Tank House). (Runs to July 29).

NOWTORONTO.COM

Stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando blooms
Sarah Ruhl's version of the prescient novel about a gender-crossing nobleman is a delightful romp