Emma Orczy

23 September 1865 – 12 November 1947

100 works on record

Biography

Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was born in Tarnaörs, Heves County, Hungary, the daughter of composer Baron Felix Orczy and Countess Emma Wass. In 1868, fearing a potential peasant revolution, her parents left Hungary. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris before settling in London in 1880. Orczy attended West London School of Art and then Heatherley's School of Fine Art. In 1894, she married illustrator Montague MacLean Barstow, whom she had met at art school. The couple had very little money, and Orczy started to work with her husband as a translator and an illustrator. In 1899, she had a child, and published her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks. In 1903, she and her husband coauthored her most famous work, The Scarlet Pimpernel. She went on to write over a dozen sequels to the novel. She also created a number of memorable detectives: Lady Molly Robertson-Kirk of Scotland Yard, who heads the "Female Department" (her cases are collected in Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, 1910); Monsieur Fernand, a Napoleonic-era secret agent (The Man in Grey, 1918); and Patrick Mulligan, a shady attorney (Skin o' My Tooth, 1928). Her greatest detective was the Old Man in the Corner, probably the first of the "armchair" detectives. He sits in a chair in a London tea shop, unraveling knots and intricate cases brought to him by Polly Burton, a young reporter. Many of these were later collected in The Old Man in the Corner (1909). [Leslie S. Klinger, In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes (2011)]

Works

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard

1976

Links in the chain of life

1947

The turbulent duchess (H. R. H. Madame la Duchesse de Berri)

1935

A child of the Revolution

1932

A joyous adventure

1932

Marivosa

1930

The Adventures of The Scarlet Pimpernel

1929

Blue eyes and grey

1928

The Honourable Jim

1924

Nicolette

1922

His Majesty's well-beloved

1919

Flower o' the lily

1919

The principal witness

1919

The man in grey

1918

A sheaf of bluebells

1917

Lord Tony's Wife

1917

How Jean-Pierre met the Scarlet Pimpernel

1917

Leatherface

1916

The bronze eagle

1915

A bride of the plains

1915

Unto Caesar

1914

Fire in Stubble

1912

A true woman

1912

The noble rogue

1912

The heart of a woman

1911

Petticoat rule

1910

The Old Man in the Corner

1909

In Mary's reign

1907

A son of the people

1906

I Will Repay

1906

The Scarlet Pimpernel

1900

Pilot Scarlet Pimpernel Lmp

Scarlet Pimpernel Omnibus

Reader's Digest Best Loved Books for Young Readers--Volume Two

The Scarlet Pimpernel (Book 1 of The Scarlet Pimpernel Series)

Detection by Gaslight

Baroness Orczy's Old Man in the Corner

Great Classic Mysteries II

Great detective stories

The Scarlet Pimpernel. With decorations by Richard Kennedy

The Elusive Pimpernel with a Child of the Revolution, Mam'zelle Guillotine, the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Adventures of the Scarlet Pimp