'Orlando, like all Virginia Woolf's novels, has cast off and accumulated numerous alternative identities and has gone through an intensive process of "Arrangement" and "Composition". The publication of a full transcription of the holograph now makes it possible for close readers of Woolf to watch that process taking place. . . . The manuscripts provide . . . the essential sources of information about her processes of work. . . . where Virginia Woolf's handwriting has posed problems, it looks as if Clarke has made better guesses.'

Hermione Lee, Times Literary Supplement.

Orlando, which has been called 'the longest and most charming love-letter in literature', commemorates the love affair between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West.

Woolf was accustomed to write out her novels in longhand, then type them up, working and re-working them until ready for publication. She usually destroyed the intermediate versions after the book had been published. Nevertheless, Woolf valued her first drafts and she had the draft of Orlando specially bound as a gift for Vita.

Accessible for the first time, the original manuscript has been transcribed together with all Woolf's insertions, deletions, and second-thoughts. In studying the first draft we can see the evolution of the novel and in the passages which differ substantially from the published text we can see not only how they relate to that text but how they function in the draft. It offers a fascinating comparison with the published version.

ISBN 0 9519756 0 9. 1993. Edition limited to 500 numbered copies. 287 MS rectos + 29 MS versos + 36 pages. Casebound (laminated). 315mm x 216mm.

£34.50 (or US$65.00) including postage and packing.

For ordering details, please contact me at the address below:

Stuart N Clarke
Fairhaven, Charnleys Lane, Banks, SOUTHPORT PR9 8HJ, UK

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