A Hungarian-born British novelist, playwright and artist of noble origin. She is most known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Orczy 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. Other popular detective stories featured The Old Man In the Corner, a sleuth who chiefly used logic to solve crimes.
Orczy's novels were racy, mannered melodramas and she favored historical fiction. Critic Mary Cadogan states "Orczy's books are highly wrought and intensely atmospheric". In The Nest of the Sparrowhawk (1909), for example, a malicious guardian in Puritan Kent tricks his beautiful, wealthy, young ward into marrying him by disguising himself as an exiled French prince. He persuades his widowed sister-in-law to abet him in this plot, in which she unwittingly disgraces one of her long lost sons and finds the other murdered by the villain. Even though this novel had no link to The Scarlet Pimpernel other than its shared authorship, the publisher advertised it as part of "The Scarlet Pimpernel Series".
Contents
Scarlet Pimpernel Series
The Laughing Cavalier
The First Sir Percy
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel
I Will Repay
The Elusive Pimpernel
Lord Tony's Wife
El Dorado
The Old Man in the Corner
Petticoat Rule
"Unto Caesar"
A Bride of the Plains
Castles in the Air
Beau Brocade, A Romance
Leatherface
The Tangled Skein
The Nest of the Sparrowhawk
The Heart of a Woman
The Bronze Eagle
His Majesty's Well-Beloved
The Emperor's Candlesticks
Lady Molly of Scotland Yard
Sir Percy Leads the Band
The Man in Grey
Scarlet Pimpernel Series
A secret society of English aristocrats is engaged in rescuing their French counterparts from the guillotine of the French Revolution. Their leader, the Scarlet Pimpernel, takes his nickname from the small red flower with which he signs his messages.
