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Gangbare naam: Baroness Orczy
Pseudoniemen en naamsvarianten: Orczy, Emma Magdalena Rosalia Maria Josephina Barbara
Orczy Barstow, Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála, Baroness
Geboortedatum: 1865-09-23
Overlijdensdatum: 1947-11-12
Geslacht: female
Nationaliteit: Hongarije (birth)
Groot-Brittannië ( [1880])
Geboorteplaats: Tanaörs, Hungary
Plaats van overlijden: Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Woonplaatsen: London, England, UK
Budapest, Hungary
Brussels, Belgium
Paris, France
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Opleiding: West London School of Art
Heatherley's School of Fine Art
Beroepen: artist
illustrator
novelist
translator
aristocrat
Relaties: Korda, Alexander (producer)
Organisaties: Detection Club
Korte biografie: Emma Magdalena Rosalia Maria Josephina Barbara, Baroness Orczy, known as Emmuska, was born in Hungary, the daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a landed aristocrat and well-known composer and conductor, and his wife Countess Emma Wass. She was educated in Brussels, Paris, and London, and exhibited her art work in the Royal Academy. In 1894, she married Montagu Barstow, a British clergyman and artist, and they worked together as illustrators and jointly published an edition of Hungarian folk tales. Orczy became famous in 1905 with the publication of her novel The Scarlet Pimpernel (originally a play co-written with her husband). Its background of the French Revolution and swashbuckling hero, Sir Percy Blakeney, was to prove immensely popular. Sequel books followed and numerous film and TV versions have been made with the first in 1934, produced by Alexander Korda, another Hungarian. Baroness Orczy also wrote detective and adventure stories. She inherited her family’s estate of Tarna-Ors in Hungary but continued to live in England until the end of World War I, when she and her husband settled in Monte Carlo.

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The Old Man in the Corner: The Teahouse Detective… door Baroness Orczy

Unsatisfactory mysteries “solved” by an unnecessary gimmick with an untwisty twist.

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Fiddleback_ | 13 andere besprekingen | May 28, 2024 |

The Scarlet Pimpernel (Barnes & Noble Classics) door Baroness Orczy

This book was a companion to me while I was ill -- still am, too -- and quite enjoyed it. It is the start, I think, of some good old intrigue with a league of secret noblemen who strive to rescue innocent if well born people from the French Republic's hungry Madame le Guillotine...

But really, at the core of it, it's about a proud and clever woman, estranged from her husband who she loves but is distant from, and what it will take to reconcile them. Oh yes, there's spies and plots and murder and treachery, but... when it comes down to it, this is about a married couple getting past pride and being able to see where they went wrong.

It's very -- ah, 'woman as temptress/fallen' (as the times were) but it's not so insulting to women as, say, Twilight, by any means. Lady Blakenley is intelligent, cunning, crafty, and loves her brother enough to enter a world of intrigue to save him... and loves her husband enough to defy convention and chase him across the channel. Bella Swann would just cry and consider suicide a lot at her failure to be what someone else wants, so while the The Scarlet Pimpernel has some old fashioned ideas about women, they're a lot more empowering then some modern lit these days!

An excellent book, and if you've got love in your life-- or a desire for some intrigue-- you ought to consider reading it. It does end rather abruptly, which left me a little cold (and the only reason it lost a star) but it's a damn fine romp through the pages otherwise… (meer)

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crowsandprose | 191 andere besprekingen | May 15, 2024 |

The Scarlet Pimpernel {audiobook} door Emmuska Orczy

Marguerite St. Just was a beautiful, anti-Monarchist, French actress who fell in love with and married Sir Percy Blakeney, a handsome, rich, stupid, English aristocrat. Her brother, Armand, fell in love with a French Marquis’ daughter and was beaten almost to death for daring to love above his class. In revenge, Marguerite exposed the Marquis’ plot with Austria to overthrow the French government, resulting in the execution of the Marquis and his family. Now, Marguerite feels terrible guilt and is lightly resented by her husband and her wealthy peers over it. (But she mostly doesn't care because she's busy telling anyone who will listen how stupid her husband is, and also because no one actually shuns her because that would be common.)

Meanwhile, a League of wealthy English aristocrats are secretly working together to rescue wealthy French aristocrats from the common people of Paris, led by a mysterious man who signs his correspondence with a red flower (scarlet pimpernel). A French envoy to England, Chauvelin, discovers that Armand is helping the Scarlet Pimpernel (why would he do that? no reason given) and blackmails Marguerite into giving him information about the Pimpernel’s identity. Marguerite discovers that her husband is the Scarlet Pimpernel and is only pretending to be stupid and so now she loves him again, but it's almost too late. She races to France to warn Percy before Chauvelin captures him, but only finds an incredibly racist stereotype of a Jewish man. After hours of hiding in the back of an inn and then in the back of a wagon waiting for her husband, Marguerite is surprised to learn that the Jewish man was the Pimpernel all along! No one recognized him because Percy is super hot and the incredibly racist Jewish stereotype was so ugly. He has already tricked Chauvelin and rescued Armand, and Marguerite was so brave to hide in the back of that wagon so he forgives her for, uh, calling out a traitor.

It's really hard to put into words how much I hated this. The entire premise of the story relies on the “truth” that aristocrats are unquestionably superior to everyone else. The one non-aristocratic character whose thoughts we are privy to, an innkeeper, sincerely believes that he is privileged to be allowed to serve the members of the League who visit his business. The evidence that the commoners of France are bad people is that a similar French innkeeper only provides room and board in exchange for money without being deferential enough to the “well-born” customers. Quelle horreur! The only interesting dynamic here is that the English hate the French so much that it's almost subversive to care about even their most privileged elite. Nothing brings sworn enemies together like class war, I guess.

The age of the book is no excuse. 1905 is fifty years after Dickens was writing about social justice and over a century is plenty of hindsight to write about the French Revolution. Even Shakespeare managed to tell stories about aristocrats while writing their servants as fleshed-out human beings with their own thoughts and opinions. The book is only a “product of its time” in that the author was desperately clinging to the empire that gave her barony its power as it was about to decline and fall.

There is no doubt that the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror far overreached its original objective and executed many clergy and commoners accused of crimes without evidence or trial. However, the Scarlet Pimpernel does not care about them. There is no discussion among the members of the League about stopping the Reign of Terror, rescuing anyone else, or even destroying a guillotine or two. He only rescues wealthy and powerful aristocrats (whom the book repeatedly calls “innocents”).

The alleged cultural value of this story is as the prototype of a swashbuckling hero with a secret identity and a love triangle where two of the sides are the same person in disguise. However, I wouldn't consider rescuing aristocrats to be particularly heroic, and the only swashbuckling actions we see the Pimpernel take are disguising himself as an old woman and a gross stereotype. The doltish Percy is admittedly a great ruse, but Marguerite never has strong feelings about the Pimpernel one way or the other until after she discovers he's really her husband. I did enjoy that the book was so close on Marguerite's point of view throughout, so we always know her thoughts and the story is revealed to the audience at the same time as her, but that becomes a detriment in the second half of the book when she spends hours hiding in small spaces so she can watch the real action happen.

There could be some purpose in teaching this book in school literature class to show how the values and beliefs of an artist are reflected in their art, but there doesn't seem to be much critical analysis to that end around the internet. The story is culturally beloved but I didn't find anything to appreciate here aside from the audiobook narrator's hilarious foppish accent.… (meer)

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norabelle414 | 191 andere besprekingen | May 9, 2024 |

The Scarlet Pimpernel door Emma Orczy

Lady Blakeney, the sine qua non of fashionable English society, hides behind her quick wit the secret sorrow of a husband who is no longer the man she fell in love with. Little does she know the secret pain behind her husband's own mask...

Also there is dashing derring-dos - but really (if you've ever seen the movie) it's quite startling how nearly-entirely the novel is from Marguerite's point of view and how focused it is on their marriage.

This book isn't really "good literature" but it is awfully fun.… (meer)

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zeborah | 191 andere besprekingen | Apr 22, 2024 |

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