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Updated July 31, 1998
Created July 31, 1998
What is the publication history of Orlando?
A limited edition of Orlando was published in the United States on October 8 by Crosby Gaige (some of them on green paper). The regular U.S. edition came from Woolf’s usual U.S. publisher, Harcourt Brace, on October 18, 1928. The Hogarth Press published Orlando on Thursday, October 11, 1928, the date given in the closing line of the book. Hussey reports that subsequent English editions omitted the illustrations until 1990.
Orlando was published near the time of Radclyffe Hall’s trial for obscenity in her portrayal of lesbian love in her autobiographical novel The Well of Loneliness (her publisher had withdrawn it in August 1928, and the trial resulted in its being banned in the U.K.). Lee describes Orlando as a "a masterpiece of playful subterfuge" (485) designed to avoid the censorship that befell Well. [Note: Woolf also deleted "references to Sappho, to Orlando’s ‘lusts’ and her love affairs with women" (Lee 517).]
Lee reports that Woolf’s income from book sales nearly tripled with the publication of Orlando (from 545 pounds in 1927—TTL income mostly— to 1434 pounds in 1928), and reached its peak in 1929. They remodelled their house at Rodmell with some of the Orlando proceeds.