8vo. Eight half-tone plates, including three of with Vita Sackville-West as subject. (Light scattered spotting on edges, preliminary leaves and index.) Original orange cloth gilt-lettered on spine (a few pale spots to fore-edge, a few minor bumps to edges); illustrated dust-jacket printed in black (some chipping with occasional repairs on verso, 1-in. tear to rear panel).
 
FIRST ENGLISH EDITION of Woolf's fantastic historical biography, spanning the 400-year life span of the title character, which challenged conventions of time and gender. According to Cleveland B. Chase's 1928 review of Orlando for the New York Times: "Mrs. Woolf has broken with tradition and convention and has set out to explore still another fourth dimension of writing. Not that she has abandoned the 'stream of consciousness' method which she used with such conspicuous success in her previous novels, but with it she has combined what, for lack of a better term, we might describe as an application to writing of the Einstein theory of relativity. In this new work she is largely preoccupied with the 'time' element in character and human relationships, and with a statement of the exact complexion of that intangible moment, a combination of past and future, of objective reality and subjective consciousness, which we refer to as the present." Kirkpatrick A11b.