The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emma Orczy

The Scarlet Pimpernel was first published in 1905 and has proved to be Orczys most famous and popular novel. The work was originally rejected by publishers, so she refashioned it as a play, with little initial success.The book continued to be popular throughout the twentieth century and was adapted for film, stage and television on multiple occasions. One of the most famous and well-considered adaptations is the 1934 film starring Leslie Howard and directed by Harold Young. The television adaptations include a 1955-56 version and the 1999-2000 BBC production starring Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth McGovern.The Scarlet Pimpernel is set in 1792 during the French Revolution, but centres on an English hero performing great and brave deeds in a violent and murderous climate. Marguerite St Just is a beautiful French actress, who is married to the English fop, Sir Percy Blakeney. The couple have become estranged as Marguerite has tired of her husbands seemingly superficial lifestyle. She has heard about the exploits of the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel an unknown English man who is daily helping French aristocrats to escape the Revolution. She is captivated and entranced by the stories surrounding him, but is soon forced into a position where she must assist the French ambassador to England in capturing the elusive man.

Full name: Emma ('Emmuska') Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi was a Hungarian-British novelist, best remembered as the author of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1905). Baroness Orczy's sequels to the novel were less successful. She was also an artist, and her works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, London. Her first venture into fiction was with crime stories. Among her most popular characters was The Old Man in the Corner, who was featured in a series of twelve British movies from 1924, starring Rolf Leslie.Baroness Emmuska Orczy was born in Tarnaörs, Hungary, as the only daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a noted composer and conductor, and his wife Emma. Her father was a friend of such composers as Wagner, Liszt, and Gounod. Orczy moved with her parents from Budapest to Brussels and then to London, learning to speak English at the age of fifteen. She was educated in convent schools in Brussels and Paris. In London she studied at the West London School of Art. Orczy married in 1894 Montague Barstow, whom she had met while studying at the Heatherby School of Art. Together they started to produce book and magazine illustrations and published an edition of Hungarian folktales.Orczy's first detective stories appeared in magazines. As a writer she became famous in 1903 with the stage version of the Scarlet Pimpernel.