The Scarlet Pimpernel
Baroness Orczy (1865–1947), 1905
In the Terror, an English dandy and his glittering wife move through a France that is hunting a masked rescuer known only as the Scarlet Pimpernel. A brisk, theatrical chase through Revolutionary salons, with a witty society voice, moral tension, and sudden quiet passages.
Feels like serenity. About society, morality and freedom.
Who it’s for
You may enjoy it if you like historical adventure with disguises, drawing-room intrigue, and a morally charged atmosphere. The period prose and social manners can feel formal and dated, so the wit may not suit every taste.
Why read it
It offers a fast, theatrical escape into a Revolution-era cat-and-mouse game, with wit and moral unease beneath the society polish.
Pages from the book
A marriage measured in how many rooms apart two people sleep.
All else was quiet round her. She had heard the horses prancing as they were being led away to their distant stables, the hurrying of servants’ feet as they had all gone within to rest: the house also was quite still. In two separate suites of apartments, just above the magnificent reception-rooms, lights were still burning, they were her rooms, and his, well divided from each other by the whole width of the house, as far apart as their own lives had become. Involuntarily she sighed—at that moment she could really not have told why. The small private room even the closest sibling never enters.
This was his first visit to England since her marriage, and the few months of separation had already seemed to have built up a slight, thin partition between brother and sister; the same deep, intense love was still there, on both sides, but each now seemed to have a secret orchard, into which the other dared not penetrate. What the sea looks like to someone who cannot sleep.
It was long past midnight when at last Marguerite retired to rest. As she had feared, sleep sedulously avoided her eyes. Her thoughts were of the blackest during these long, weary hours, whilst that incessant storm raged which was keeping her away from Percy. The sound of the distant breakers made her heart ache with melancholy. She was in the mood when the sea has a saddening effect upon the nerves. It is only when we are very happy, that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. Baroness Orczy.Born Emma Orczy in Hungary and raised in London and Paris, she put the Pimpernel on stage first: a hit 1903 play ran for years before the novel appeared in 1905.
Books that feel like this
More by Baroness Orczy
The Old Man in the Corner
Baroness Orczy, 1909
A nameless man in a teashop solves London's murders from his chair, knotting string, while a young journalist listens — and never gets proof.
The Elusive Pimpernel
Baroness Orczy, 1908
The Scarlet Pimpernel returns to Revolutionary France, and the spy he humiliated is waiting with a bargain, a locked prison and a very careful trap.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Scarlet Pimpernel for me?
- You may enjoy it if you like historical adventure with disguises, drawing-room intrigue, and a morally charged atmosphere. The period prose and social manners can feel formal and dated, so the wit may not suit every taste.
- What is The Scarlet Pimpernel like?
- A brisk, theatrical chase through Revolutionary salons, with a witty society voice, moral tension, and sudden quiet passages. Feels like serenity. About society, morality and freedom.
- What should I read after The Scarlet Pimpernel?
- If you liked The Scarlet Pimpernel, try The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) and The Law of the Four Just Men (Edgar Wallace).
A taste of the feed
What silence feels like when it isn't loneliness.
This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · Mark Twain
A body gone silent, and one light still signalling from inside.
Sight and hearing were the only senses remaining, and they, like two solitary sparks, remained to animate the miserable body which seemed fit for nothing but the grave; it was only, however, by means of one of these senses that he could reveal the thoughts and feelings that still occupied his mind, and the look by which he gave expression to his inner life was like the distant gleam of a candle which a traveller sees by night across some desert place, and knows that a living being dwells beyond the silence and obscurity.
The Count of Monte Cristo · Alexandre Dumas
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