SOURCE: The Novels of Virginia Woolf Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1977, 237 p.

In the following excerpt, Lee discusses Woolf's use of the life and writings of Vita Sackville-West as inspiration for Orlando.

Orlando has a different quality from all Virginia Woolf's other novels, though it is interestingly comparable to many of them, particularly to Jacob's Room and Between the Acts. The difference in quality is suggested by its subtitle, 'A Biography': it is an attempt to represent the character of a real person. Though To the Lighthouse was also, in a sense, biographical, it was not written for the characters who are evoked in the novel. Orlando, by contrast, is a personal offering, dedicated to Vita Sackville-West in a spirit of love and fascination and also of irony.

In writing the book, Nigel Nicolson suggests [in his Portrait of a Marriage], 'Virginia had provided Vita with a unique consolation...