1. Baroness Emma Orczy, usually known as Baroness Orczy or to her family and friends as Emmuska Orczy, was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright.
24 Facts About Baroness Orczy
1. 2.
Baroness Orczy is best known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, the alter ego of Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop who turns into a quick-thinking escape artist in order to save French aristocrats from "Madame Guillotine" during the French Revolution, establishing the "hero with a secret identity" in popular culture.
3.
Baroness Orczy is known for her role in the White Feather Movement.
4.
Baroness Orczy established the Women of England's Active Service League during World War I with the intention of empowering women to convince men to enlist in the military.
5.
Baroness Orczy was the daughter of the composer Baron Felix Orczy de Orci and Countess Emma Wass de Szentegyed et Cege.
6.
Baroness Orczy's paternal grandfather, Baron Laszlo Orczy, was a royal councillor, and knight of the Sicilian order of Saint George; her paternal grandmother, Baroness Magdolna, born Magdolna Muller, was of Austrian origin.
7.
Baroness Orczy attended West London School of Art and then the Heatherley School of Fine Art.
8.
John Montague Baroness Orczy-Barstow, their only child, was born on 25 February 1899.
9.
Baroness Orczy started writing soon after his birth, but her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks, was a failure.
10.
Baroness Orczy did find a small following with a series of detective stories in the Royal Magazine.
11.
Baroness Orczy had conceived the character while standing on a platform on the London Underground.
12.
Baroness Orczy submitted her novelisation of the story under the same title to 12 publishers.
13.
Baroness Orczy went on to write over a dozen sequels featuring Sir Percy Blakeney, his family, and the other members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, of which the first, I Will Repay, was the most popular.
14.
Baroness Orczy wrote popular mystery fiction and many adventure romances.
15.
Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly of Scotland Yard was an early example of a female detective as the main character.
16.
Baroness Orczy was a founding member of the Detection Club.
17.
Baroness Orczy's novels were racy, mannered melodramas and she favoured historical fiction.
18.
Critic Mary Cadogan states, "Baroness Orczy's books are highly wrought and intensely atmospheric".
19.
Baroness Orczy 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.
20.
Baroness Orczy was a firm believer in the superiority of the aristocracy, as well as being a supporter of British imperialism and militarism.
21.
Baroness Orczy's aim was to enlist 100,000 women who would pledge "to persuade every man I know to offer his service to his country".
22.
Baroness Orczy's work was so successful that she was able to buy a house in Monte Carlo: "Villa Bijou" at 19 Avenue de la Costa, which is where she spent World War II.
23.
Baroness Orczy was not able to return to London until after the war.
24.
Baroness Orczy died in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire on 12 November 1947.