SOURCE: A review of Orlando, in Virginia Woolf: The Critical Heritage, edited by Robin Majumdar and Allen McLaurin, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, pp. 234-36.

An American man of letters best known for his poetry, Aiken was deeply influenced by the psychological and literary theories of Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henri Bergson, among others, and is considered a master of literary stream of consciousness. In the following review, which was originally published in the Dial in February 1929, Aiken comments on form, tone, and theme in Orlando.

That Mrs Woolf is a highly ingenious writer has been made glitteringly obvious for us in Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse: which is not in the least to minimize the fact that those two novels also contained a great deal of beauty. That she is, and has perhaps always been, in danger of carrying ingenuity too far, is suggested...