The Scarlet Pimpernel - (Puffin Classics) by Emmuska Orczy (Paperback)

About the Book

The classic tale of danger and intrigue during the French Revolution. Armed with only his wits and his cunning, one man recklessly defies the revolutionaries and rescues scores of innocent men, women, and children from the deadly guillotine. His friends and foes know him only as the Scarlet Pimpernel. But a ruthless French agent is swornto discover his identity and hunt him down.

Book Synopsis

The first and most successful in the Baroness's series of books that feature Percy Blakeney, who leads a double life as an English fop and a swashbuckling rescuer of aristocrats, The Scarlet Pimpernel was the blueprint for what became known as the masked-avenger genre. As Anne Perry writes in her Introduction, the novel "has almost reached its first centenary, and it is as vivid and appealing as ever because the plotting is perfect. It is a classic example of how to construct, pace, and conclude a plot. . . . To rise on the crest of laughter without capsizing, to survive being written, rewritten, and reinterpreted by each generation, is the mark of a plot that is timeless and universal, even though it happens to be set in England and France of 1792."

Review Quotes

"Arguably the best adventure story ever published and certainly the most influential that appeared during the early decades of the twentieth century."--Gary Hoppenstand

About the Author

Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865-1947), an only child of Austro-Hungarian nobles, lived most of her life in London, where she built her reputation as an established novelist, playwright, and artist. Also a success on stage, her most famous novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel, spawned a series of books featuring its cast of characters.