<P>Virginia Woolf's <I>Orlando</I> 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature' playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and 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 and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost.</P><P>At the midpoint of the novel Orlando now an ambassador in Costantinople awakes to find that he is a woman and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928 a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando now a wife and mother stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.</P>