“The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Emmuska Orczy is an exciting book with some great history behind it. After reading it (book review) I did some research on it and found some amazing and fun facts.
1) Baroness Emmuska Orczy full name is Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi.
Emmuska, meaning “little Emma”, is a nickname and is pronounced em-moosh-ka.
2) “The Scarlet Pimpernel” was originally written as a play which received negative reviews but popular success.
3) The book was published after the play opened and was immediately successful.
4) The novel was translated to at least 16 languages and been adapted to film, television and even a musical.
5) Due to the success of her novel, Baroness Orczy wrote a whole series of books associated with “The Scarlet Pimpernel”. The books were not written in chronological order, however for your convince here they are in the order they might be read:
6) Several historical figures show up in the book even though it is not historically accurate. The figures are:
7) Originally there were nine members who formed The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel
8) On January, 1793 ten more members were enrolled.
9) Lady Blakeney was named a member of The League in Mam’zelle Guillotine
10) The Scarlett Pimpernel books allowed the Baroness and her husband to live comfortably for the rest of their days in the English countryside.
I didn’t know there were more books – more on the TBR list.
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I had no idea there were so many books based on this character. Weird thing is, I always seem to have bits of this book mixed up with The Tale of Two Cities.
Me neither, I think most of them are short (200 pages or so).
Thanks for teaching me how to pronounce Emmuska! I've always wondered. :)
I read one of the other books and it was uninteresting enough that I never felt the need to read the others. I can't remember which one, but it repeated the same general conflicts as in the original, and Marguerite and Percy seemed much the same. Sigh.
I also had no idea that there were so many Scarlet Pimpernel books. Sounds like Baroness Emmuska Orczy milked the niche for all it was worth!
Fun Facts Friday is a great idea. Looking forward to reading future posts in this series.
LOL, yes "miliking it" is one way to put it.
Thanks, I'll do my best to live up to the Fun Facts Fridays.
What great 'fun facts"! I was pleased to read that there are other "SP" books, and just might try one. Thanks for ordering them more or less chronologically.
I learned there were more books about 15 years ago while working at B&N and a tween and her mother came in looking for the rest. Sadly, they are long out of print, so alas, I fear another burgeoning reader was thwarted. I hope they found some used, but this was in the infancy of the internet so it would have been much more difficult than today. I did though think there were only about 5 books in the series - I had no idea there were so many!