Orlando’s journey, from the court of Queen Elizabeth I to modern times will also be an internal one. He is an impulsive poet who learns patience in matters of the heart, and a woman who knows what it is to be a man. Virginia’s Woolf’s most unusual and fantastic creation is a funny, exuberant tale which examines the very nature of sexuality.

Subject of this extraordinary novel is the daily life of an English family in the Hebrides. "Radiant as To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality."-Eudora Welty, from her Introduction.

Set in London before World War I, this novel explores the truth of feelings and particularly the nature of love. It is, in that sense, a love story, but in the hands of Virginia Woolf, it transcends conventional romance to pose a series of crucial questions about women, intellectual freedom, and marriage.