SOURCE: "Prefaces: Orlando," in her Seven Winters: Memories of a Dublin Childhood and Afterthoughts, Alfred A. Knopf, 1962, pp. 130-39.

Bowen was an Anglo-Irish fiction writer and critic. Often compared with the fiction of Virginia Woolf her novels and short stories display a similar stylistic control and subtle insight in the portrayal of human relationships. Bowen is also noted for her series of supernatural stories set in London during World War II. In the following excerpt, which was originally published as the foreword to the Signet Classics edition of Orlando, she recalls her initial impressions of the novel upon its publication in 1928 and reconsiders it within the context of Woolf's career.

I write to you in the middle of reading Orlando, in such a turmoil of excitement and confusion that I scarcely know where (or who!) I am.… It came this morning by the first post and I have...