Baroness Orczy

Baroness Emma Orczy (September 23 1865 – November 12 1947) was a British novelist, playwright and artist of Hungarian origin. She was most notable for her series of novels featuring The Scarlet Pimpernel. Some of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London.

Born Emma Magdalena Rosalia Maria Josefa Barbara Orczy in Tarnaörs, Hungary, she was the daughter of composer Baron Felix Orczy and his wife, Countess Emma Wass. Family friends at their Hungarian estates included Gounod, Liszt, and Wagner. Her parents left Hungary in 1868, fearful of the threat of a peasant revolution. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris, where Emma studied music without success. Finally, in 1880, the family moved to London where they lodged with their countryman Francis Pichler at 162 Great Portland Street. Orczy attended West London School of Art and then Heatherley's School of Fine Art, where she met her future husband, Montague Maclean Barstow, whom she married in 1894.

They had very little money, and Orczy started to work with her husband as a translator and an illustrator to supplement his low earnings. John Montague Orczy-Barstow, their only child, was born February 25 1899. She started writing soon after his birth but her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks (1899), was a failure. She did, however, find a small audience with a series of detective stories in the Royal Magazine. Her next novel, In Mary's Reign (1901) did better and in 1903 she and her husband wrote a play based on one of her short stories about an English knight who rescued French aristocrats from the French revolution: The Scarlet Pimpernel. She submitted her novelisation of the story under the same title to 12 publishers. While waiting the decision of these publishers, Fred Terry and Julia Neilson accepted the play for production in the West End. Initially it drew small attendances but the play ran four years in London, broke many stage records, was translated and produced in other countries, and underwent several revivals. This theatrical success generated huge sales for the novel.

She went on to write several sequels featuring Sir Percy Blakeney and his family, of which the first, I Will Repay (1906), was the most popular. None of her three subsequent plays matched the success of The Scarlet Pimpernel. She also wrote popular mystery fiction and many adventure romances. Her novel Lady Molly of Scotland Yard was the first to feature a female detective as the main character.

Orczy's novels were racy, mannered melodramas and she favoured historical fiction. 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'.

Her work was so successful that she was able to buy an estate in Monte Carlo.

She died in Henley-on-Thames on November 12 1947.

Her son, John Montague Orczy-Barstow, was a writer under the name John Blakeney, the surname taken from that of his mother's most famous fictional character.

Her grandson, Michael Felix Orczy-Barstow, was a British aviator and an early computer systems analyst. He died in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Works

(incomplete)

• Old Hungarian Fairy Tales (1895) translator with Montague Barstow
• The Enchanted Cat (1895) translator with Montague Barstow
• Fairyland’s Beauty (1895) translator with Montague Barstow
• Uletka and the White Lizard (1895) translator with Montague Barstow
• The Emperor's Candlesticks (1899)
• In Mary's Reign (1901) later The Tangled Skein (1907)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (play 1903, novel 1905)
• The Sin of William Jackson (play, 1906)
• The Case of Miss Elliot (collection of mysteries, 1905)
• By the Gods Beloved (1905) later The Gates of Kamt (1907)
• I Will Repay (1906)
• A Son of the People (1906)
• Beau Brocade (1907)
• The Elusive Pimpernel (1908)
• Beau Brocade (play, 1908)
• The Old Man In the Corner (1909)
• The Nest of the Sparrowhawk (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909)
• Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (1910)
• Petticoat Government (1910)
• A True Woman (1911)
• The Duke's Wager (1911) play
• The Traitor (1912)
• The Good Patriots (1912)
• Fire in Stubble (1912)
• Meadowsweet (1912)
• Eldorado (1913)
• Unto Cæsar (1914)
• The Laughing Cavalier (1914)
• A Bride of the Plains (1915)
• The Bronze Eagle (1915)
• Leatherface (1916)
• Lord Tony's Wife (1917)
• A Sheaf of Bluebells (1917)
• Flower o' the Lily (1918)
• The Man in Grey (1918) stories
• The Legion of Honour (1918) play, adapted from A Sheaf of Bluebells
• His Majesty's Well-beloved (1919)
• The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1919)
• The First Sir Percy (1921)
• Castles in the Air (collection, 1921)
• The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1922)
• Nicolette: A Tale of Old Provence (1922)
• The Honourable Jim (1924)
• Pimpernel and Rosemary (1924)
• Les Beaux et les Dandys de Grand Siècles en Angleterre (1924)
• The Miser of Maida Vale (1925)
• A Question of Temptation (1925)
• Unravelled Knots (1926)
• The Celestial City (1926)
• Sir Percy Hits Back (1927)
• Skin o' My Tooth (collection, 1928)
• The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1929)
• Blue Eyes and Grey (1929)
• Marivosa (1930)
• In the Rue Monge (1931)
• A Joyous Adventure (1932)
• A Child of the Revolution (1932)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel Looks at the World (1933)
• The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1933)
• A Spy of Napoleon (1934)
• The Uncrowned King (1935)
• The Turbulent Duchess (1935)
• Sir Percy Leads the Band (1936)
• The Divine Folly (1937)
• No Greater Love (1938)
• The Gallant Pimpernel (1939) collection of four novels
• Mam'zelle Guillotine (1940)
• Pride of Race (1942)
• The Will-O'-The-Wisp (1947)
• Links in the Chain of Life (autobiography, 1947)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel Omnibus (1957)

External links

• Project Gutenberg e-texts of some of Baroness Emmuska Orczy's works (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/author?name=Orczy%2c%20Emmuska)

References

• 'Obituary—Baroness Orczy: "The Scarlet Pimpernel"', The Times, November 13 1947