The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baronness Orczy, Emmuska Orczy
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a classic novel-an extremely entertaining part romance, part adventure, part spy thriller, and part superhero fiction. The Scarlet Pimpernel follows the adventures of Sir Percy Blakeney as he seeks to help French aristocrats escape the guillotine during the French Revolution. Since official English policy forbids this, Blakeney adopts a masked identity as the Scarlet Pimpernel to remain anonymous. The French, of course, detest this interference in their affairs and set out to trap and kill the Pimpernel at all costs. As part of his effort to deflect suspicion from himself, he plays the fool in everyday life and he does it well. His own wife considers him a useless fop... and that's where the story really gets interesting. Pimpernel's wife ends up following him into danger in an attempt to save him. This allows the most suspenseful section of the book to be told from Mrs. Blakeney's perspective. Her terror for her husband's fate is pure and adds to the tension considerably. If we saw it through the Pimpernel's eyes, it would doubtless be far more composed and nowhere near as suspenseful. Well worth buying, the Scarlet Pimpernel is funny, suspenseful, romantic, and generally quite a page-turner.
Paperback
English
Brand New
Author Biography
Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865-1947) was a British novelist, playwright and artist of Hungarian noble origin. She was most notable for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel. Some of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. In 1903, she and her husband wrote a play based on one of her short stories about an English aristocrat, Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., who rescued French aristocrats from the French Revolution: The Scarlet Pimpernel. This theatrical success generated huge sales for the novel that followed. She went on to write over a dozen sequels featuring Sir Percy Blakeney, his family, and the other members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, of which the first, I Will Repay (1906), was the most popular. The last Pimpernel book, Mam'zelle Guillotine, was published in 1940. None of her three subsequent plays matched the success of The Scarlet Pimpernel. She also wrote popular mystery fiction and many adventure romances. Her Lady Molly of Scotland Yard was an early example of a female detective as the main character. During the First World War, Baroness Orczy formed the Women of England's Active Service League, an unofficial organization aimed at the recruitment of male volunteers for active service. Her aim was to enlist 100,000 women who would pledge "to persuade every man I know to offer his service to his country." Some 20,000 women joined her organization.
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