Baroness Orczy (Baroness Mrs Montague Barstow Orczy) Biography

Hungarian-born novelist, educated in Brussels, Paris, and London, where she studied art. She became immediately famous with her romantic novel The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), which followed a dramatic version written with her husband Montague Barstow, performed in Nottingham in 1903 and with great success in London in 1905. The romance follows the adventures of the fearless Sir Percy Blakeney, leader of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a band of Englishmen committed to rescuing the endangered victims of the Reign of Terror in Paris. He valiantly outwits his opponents with ingenious disguises and conceals his identity from his friends in England. Several sequels followed, such as The Elusive Pimpernel (1908) and The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1932). She also wrote several other historical romances and volumes of detective stories, but they did not match the success of her major work.