Author
Baroness Orczy
1865–1947 3 volumes Adventure & the Sea
The life
Baroness Emma Orczy was a Hungarian-born writer who arrived in London at fifteen speaking no English. The Scarlet Pimpernel was rejected by a dozen publishers; she and her husband turned it into a play, and its stage success made the book a bestseller and created the template for the masked hero with a foppish alter ego. She also wrote early detective fiction, including The Old Man in the Corner.
Where to start
The Elusive Pimpernel
264 pages — the shortest way into Orczy, not the greatest.
On! ever on! in that wild, surging torrent; sowing the wind of anarchy, of terrorism, of lust of blood and hate, and reaping a hurricane of destruction and of horror.
Paintings from these volumes
In the library