Orlando. A Biography.

First trade edition. Large crown 8vo. Pp. [ix], 333. Frontispiece, plus 7 half-tone photographic illustrations, including 3 of Vita Sackville-West as Orlando, taken by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell at Knole House. With a 'fictional' Index to rear. Typography by Frederic Warde and composition by William Edwin Rudge. Publisher's dull blue cloth ruled and decorated in blind to upper cover, with spine lettered in gilt (now faded); top edge cinnamon, others partially untrimmed. Published 18 October 1928 at $3. 1/6,350 copies printed. Preceded by the Crosby Gaige signed limited edition, issued in New York sixteen days earlier, and the Hogarth Press edition, published in London a week earlier.

Light foxing to prelims, gently pushed-in to corners, else Very Good.

"Come, come! I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another." Conceived as a "writer's holiday" from more structured and demanding novels and dedicated to the author's friend and (rumoured) lover Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a mock 'biography' of a chameleon-like historical figure who changes sex and identity at will. The story concludes on Thursday, 11th October 1928 – the date of the novel's first Hogarth Press publication, bringing to a close Woolf's playful and exuberant romp through history. Sackville-West's son, Nigel, would later describe it as 'the longest and most charming love letter in literature'. Basis for the 1992 Academy Award-nominated film directed by Sally Potter, starring Tilda Swinton in the title role and Quentin Crisp as Elizabeth I. "A poetic masterpiece of the first rank." –Rebecca West

[Kirkpatrick A11c]