Orlando Book Covers
American editions
1928 HBJ (rpt 1973 and QPB)
1946 Penguin (paperback only)
1960 Signet (paperback only)
2002 (May) e-book
2002 (June) “definitive”
(1928 Hogarth Press with variants)
See also www.tetterton.net/orlando/orlando_covers.html
Penguin Paperback (1946)
This edition omitted all
the photos and is the
second American edition.
Back cover has only a bio
of VW, with a quote from
David Garnett, “All her
best work was inspired
by the memory of people
she had known . . . .”
Signet Classic/New American
Library (1960)
Third American edition.
Blurb: “Spanning three and a half
centuries of boisterous, exuberant
adventure in England, in Constantinople,
with aristocrats and gypsies—first as a
man, then as a woman– Orlando’s story is
a wild farce, a humorous history, a gay
romance. . . . Rebecca West called
Orlando ‘a poetic masterpiece of the first
rank’ and Elizabeth Bowen found it ‘one
of the most high-spirited books I know . . .
A book for those who are young in a big
way.’”
HBJ 1973
th
(14
printing)
This American edition was a photooffset of the original 1928
American edition. The 1st – 16th
impressions of it used this cover.
“In her exuberant, most fanciful
novel, Virginia Woolf has created a
character liberated from the
restraints of time and sex... A
brilliantly imagined pageant of
English history, society, and
literature, Orlando is also a
feminist reappraisal of the nature of
the sexes. ”
QPB “Triangle Classics” Edition
1993 QPB (1928 ed)
(#6 in list of top 100 gay books compiled by
Triangle Publishing in 1999. Death in
Venice was #1. Well of Loneliness was #7.)
This Quality Paperback Book
Club edition has a triangle on the
spine and back, signifying this as
part of their gay and lesbian
books. “In this spirited and
thoroughly original fantasy . . .
Virginia Woolf created a
character liberated from the
restraints of time and gender. . .
Orlando skewers society’s
limiting definitions of the sexes
in such a sparkling way that it
remains as fresh and provocative
as when it was written.”
“Definitive Edition” (1992)
“With an introduction by
Quentin Bell, this definitive
edition contains the original
Hograth Press text as overseen
by the author, the illustrations
which appeared in the first
edition of ORLANDO in
1928, and a list of textual
variants that appeared during
her lifetime.” Also available
in a French translation by
Charles Mauron (Vintage/Ebury,
div Random House).
B&N 2002 cover
Post-Movie Covers (1992 ff)
“Harvest Book” 17th
printing (HBJ; 1986ed?),
Tilda Swinton, movie
poster. Photo Liam
Longman, 1992
HBJ (1973 edition,
also listed as 1993)
Tilda Swinton?
Photo John Berninzoni
DVD Cover (movie)
Tilda Swinton and Billy Zane
Audio Edition (1994)
Read by Laura Paton
“In 1927, when Virginia Woolf
was planning Orlando, she
described her proposed book as
an ‘escapade’ and ‘a love letter.’
It was an ‘escapade’ because she
needed a ‘writer’s holiday’: she
wanted to write a book about
history, biography, the meaning
of time and sexual ambiguity.”
(Liner notes, Heather Godwin)
E-Book Edition
Rosetta Books, LLC (2002)
Available in 3 electronic
versions (MS Reader,
Acrobat, Mobipocket),
$5.24 each
“A novel that is as witty and playful as it
is probing and profound, Virginia
Woolf´s Orlando is the fantastic story
of a person who lives through five
centuries, first as a man and then as a
woman.”
Modern British Editions
Definitive Edition (1992)
Bloomsbury (1993)
More Modern British Editions
Blurb quotes Vita SackvilleWest in a letter to VW:
“You have invented a new
form of Narcissm, — I confess,
— I am in love with Orlando—
this is a complication I had not
forseen”
Ed. Brenda Lyons, Intro and
Notes by Sandra Gilbert
Cover is a detail from Henry,
Prince of Wales
Penguin 1993, ed. Also available
abridged as audio book read by Tilda
Swinton.
Modern British Editions
Oxford World’s Classics (1998)
Wordsworth Classics (1995).
Ed. Merry Pawlowski . Cover is detail
Ed. Rachel Bowlby
from Orsino and Viola by Frederick Richard
Pickersgill (1820-1900)
Modern British Editions
unknown
Penguin Modern Classics
UK (2000)
Orlando. Eine Biographie
Trans. S. Fischer
(1961)
Other German Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
Zum Leuchtturm
Ein eignes Zimmer
Spanish Orlando
Translated by Argentine writer
and poet Jorge Luis Borges,
Buenos Aires, 1968
Italian Orlando
Italian edition of Borges’ Spanish translation
(1968)
Mondadori 1995 is publisher
(Is this the Italian translation
by Maura del Serra, 1993?