The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel
Baroness Orczy was born in Hungary in 1865, the daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a landed aristocrat and well-known composer and conductor. Shemoved with her parents from Budapest to Brussels and then Paris, where she was educated. Orczy alsostudied art in London and exhibited work atthe Royal Academy. Later sheMontagu Barstow and together they worked as illustrators and jointly published an edition of Hungarian folk tales. Fame came in1905 with the publication of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which was originally a play co-written with her husband. Its background of Revolution in France and swashbuckling hero, 'Sir Percy Blakeney', was to prove immensely popular. Sequels followed and many years later film and TV versions are enduringly popular, with new productions from time to time. However, Orczy alsoalso wrote detective stories which have a following today amongst those intersted in the genre. She died in 1947.