How does Orlando mix biography with fiction?

Orlando is a "fanciful biographical novel" that blends historical homage with imaginative fiction to explore the life of its protagonist across centuries.1

The work functions as a tribute to the family of Virginia Woolf’s friend, Vita Sackville-West, tracing their lineage from the Elizabethan era to their estate at Knole. While grounded in this real-world connection, Woolf employs a "pompous biographical voice" to parody the conventions of traditional biography—a genre she was intimately familiar with through her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, who edited the Dictionary of National Biography.1

By adopting this formal, authoritative tone to narrate the impossible—such as the protagonist living for centuries and spontaneously changing gender—Woolf pokes fun at the genre's pretensions. The novel further weaves in real literary figures, such as Sir Edmund Gosse, while using the protagonist's journey to parody shifting styles in English literature and examine themes of androgyny and the creative experience.1