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Overview
A Group of Titled Englishmen, Under the Leadership of a Mysterious Man, Valiantly Aid Condemned Aristocrats in their Escape from Paris to England During the French Revolution. There leader is the Scarlet Pimpernel -- A Man whose Audacity and Clever Disguises Foil the Villainous Agent Chauvelin. Who is he and can he Keep One Step Ahead of the Revolutionaries?In 1792, during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, an English aristocrat known to be an ineffectual fop is actually a master of disguises who, with a small band of dedicated friends, undertakes dangerous missions to save members of the French nobility from the guillotine.
Synopsis
The first and most successful in the Baroness’s series of books that feature Percy Blakeney, who leads a double life as an English fop and a swashbuckling rescuer of aristocrats, The Scarlet Pimpernel was the blueprint for what became known as the masked-avenger genre. As Anne Perry writes in her Introduction, the novel “has almost reached its first centenary, and it is as vivid and appealing as ever because the plotting is perfect. It is a classic example of how to construct, pace, and conclude a plot. . . . To rise on the crest of laughter without capsizing, to survive being written, rewritten, and reinterpreted by each generation, is the mark of a plot that is timeless and universal, even though it happens to be set in England and France of 1792.”
From the Trade Paperback edition.