With an Introduction & Notes by Merry M Pawlowski Professor & Chair Department of English California State University Bakersfield Virginia Woolf's Orlando ' The longest & most charming love letter in literature' playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend & lover Vita Sackville-West Spanning three centuries the novel opens as Orlando a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England awaits a visit from the Queen & traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost At the midpoint of the novel Orlando now an ambassador in Costantinople awakes to find that he is a woman & the novel indulges in farce & irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th & 19th centuries As the novel ends in 1928 a year consonant with full suffrage for women Orlando now a wife & mother stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope & promise for women