The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel, romantic novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, produced as a play in 1903 and published in book form in 1905.
The novel’s protagonist, Sir Percy Blakeney, ostensibly a foppish English aristocrat, is secretly the Scarlet Pimpernel, a swashbuckling hero and elusive master of disguise who rescues French aristocrats and smuggles them out of France to safety during the French Revolution. His nemesis is Citizen Chauvelin, a ruthless agent of Robespierre.
The author chronicled further adventures of the hero in such sequels as The Elusive Pimpernel (1908) and The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1933). In film versions, Leslie Howard starred as Sir Percy in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935). Barry K. Barnes portrayed the character in The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1938), and David Niven played the role in The Fighting Pimpernel (1954).
