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Updated July 31, 1998
Created July 31, 1998
How did readers respond to Orlando when it was first published?
Contemporary reviewers called Orlando (qtd. from Hussey 204):
· "a high-brow lark" (Arnold Bennett)
· "a very pleasant trifle" (J.C. Squier)
· "a poetic masterpiece" that combines "the frankest contempt for realism, with the profoundest reality" (Rebecca West).
Woolf wrote in her diary that "L[eonard] takes Orlando more seriously than I had expected. Thinks it in some ways better than the Lighthouse: about more interesting things, and with more attachment to life and larger. The truth is I expect I began it as a joke and went on with it seriously. Hence it lacks some unity. He says it is very original. Anyhow I’m glad to be quit this time of writing ‘a novel’: and hope never to be accused of it again" (Diary, May 31, 1928)