3.6
The Elusive Pimpernel
It is September 1793 and French Agent and chief spy-catcher Chauvelin is determined to get his revenge for the previous humiliations dished out to him at the hands of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin travels to England as an official representative of the French government tasked with looking after the interests of French citizens, but this is only a cover and his real purpose is to trick Sir Percy Blakeney into returning to France, where he can be captured and put to the guillotine. The plot is hatched at a gala on Richmond Green, with the help of a young French actress, Désirée Candielle, whom Chauvelin has enlisted with promises of money, pardon and fame if she succeeds.
Literature & Fiction
RELEASED2018
PUBLISHERBlurb, Incorporated
LENGTH318
LANGUAGEEN
Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was born in Tarnaörs, Heves County, Hungary, the daughter of composer Baron Felix Orczy and Countess Emma Wass. In 1868, fearing a potential peasant revolution, her parents left Hungary. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris before settling in London in 1880. Orczy attended West London School of Art and then Heatherley's School of Fine Art. In 1894, she married illustrator Montague MacLean Barstow, whom she had met at art school. The couple had very little money, and Orczy started to work with her husband as a translator and an illustrator. In 1899, she had a child, and published her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks. In 1903, she and her husband coauthored her most famous work, The Scarlet Pimpernel. She went on to write over a dozen sequels to the novel. She also created a number of memorable detectives: Lady Molly Robertson-Kirk of Scotland Yard, who heads the "Female Department" (her cases are collected in *Lady Molly of Scotland Yard*, 1910); Monsieur Fernand, a Napoleonic-era secret agent (*The Man in Grey*, 1918); and Patrick Mulligan, a shady attorney (*Skin o' My Tooth*, 1928). Her greatest detective was the Old Man in the Corner, probably the first of the "armchair" detectives. He sits in a chair in a London tea shop, unraveling knots and intricate cases brought to him by Polly Burton, a young reporter. Many of these were later collected in *The Old Man in the Corner* (1909). [Leslie S. Klinger, *In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes* (2011)]
3.6
The Elusive Pimpernel
by Baroness Emma Orczy, Emmuska Orczy
It is September 1793 and French Agent and chief spy-catcher Chauvelin is determined to get his revenge for the previous humiliations dished out to him at the hands of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin travels to England as an official representative of the French government tasked with looking after the interests of French citizens, but this is only a cover and his real purpose is to trick Sir Percy Blakeney into returning to France, where he can be captured and put to the guillotine. The plot is hatched at a gala on Richmond Green, with the help of a young French actress, Désirée Candielle, whom Chauvelin has enlisted with promises of money, pardon and fame if she succeeds.
Literature & Fiction
RELEASED2018
PUBLISHERBlurb, Incorporated
LENGTH318
LANGUAGEEN
Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was born in Tarnaörs, Heves County, Hungary, the daughter of composer Baron Felix Orczy and Countess Emma Wass. In 1868, fearing a potential peasant revolution, her parents left Hungary. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris before settling in London in 1880. Orczy attended West London School of Art and then Heatherley's School of Fine Art. In 1894, she married illustrator Montague MacLean Barstow, whom she had met at art school. The couple had very little money, and Orczy started to work with her husband as a translator and an illustrator. In 1899, she had a child, and published her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks. In 1903, she and her husband coauthored her most famous work, The Scarlet Pimpernel. She went on to write over a dozen sequels to the novel. She also created a number of memorable detectives: Lady Molly Robertson-Kirk of Scotland Yard, who heads the "Female Department" (her cases are collected in *Lady Molly of Scotland Yard*, 1910); Monsieur Fernand, a Napoleonic-era secret agent (*The Man in Grey*, 1918); and Patrick Mulligan, a shady attorney (*Skin o' My Tooth*, 1928). Her greatest detective was the Old Man in the Corner, probably the first of the "armchair" detectives. He sits in a chair in a London tea shop, unraveling knots and intricate cases brought to him by Polly Burton, a young reporter. Many of these were later collected in *The Old Man in the Corner* (1909). [Leslie S. Klinger, *In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes* (2011)]
