Orlando

by Virginia Woolf

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Orlando begins as a young nobleman at the court of Elizabeth I, survives for more than three centuries and becomes a woman during an embassy in Constantinople. The narrative passes through Restoration literary culture, Georgian society, Victorian marriage and the interwar present, ending in 1928. Presented as a mock biography, the novel treats gender, sexuality, inheritance and authorship as identities reshaped by law, clothing and historical convention. Its deliberate anachronisms and impossible lifespan make it historical fantasy rather than biography, while its changing settings offer a satirical survey of English social and literary history.