The Scarlet Pimpernel (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Baroness Orczy, Sarah Juliette Sasson (Introduction)

Overview

The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

• New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
• Comments by other famous authors
• Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
• Bibliographies for further reading
• Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

In the year 1792, Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite Blakeney are the darlings of British society—he is known as one of the wealthiest men in England and a dimwit;she is French, a stunning former actress, and “the cleverest woman in Europe”—and they find themselves at the center of a deadly political intrigue. The Reign of Terror controls France, and every day aristocrats in Paris fall victim to Madame la Guillotine. Only one man can rescue them—the Scarlet Pimpernel—a master of disguises who leaves a calling card bearing only a signature red flower. As the fascinating connection between the Blakeneys and this mysterious hero is revealed, they are forced to choose between love and loyalty in order to avoid the French agent Chauvelin, who relentlessly hunts the Scarlet Pimpernel.

First published in 1905, The Scarlet Pimpernel is the best-known novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, a prolific author of popular fiction and plays. The novel pioneered the tale of the masked avenger and paved the way for such future enigmatic swashbucklers as Zorro, Superman, and the Lone Ranger. Repeatedly adapted for stage and screen—most recently as a successful Broadway musical—The Scarlet Pimpernel is a relevant and enormously entertaining tale of survival and pluck during times of widespread fear, hypocrisy, and corruption.

Includes 8 pieces of original art.

Sarah Juliette Sasson is a lecturer in the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University and is the managing editor of the Romanic Review, a journal devoted to romance literatures. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia. She specializes in nineteenth-century literature and particularly in the novel. She has published essays on Honoré de Balzac, Heinrich Heine, and on social mobility in nineteenth-century literature. Currently, she is working on a book on Balzac.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593082345
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble
Publication date:	08/01/2005
Series:	Barnes & Noble Classics Series
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	55,697
Product dimensions:	5.19(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.76(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sarah Juliette Sasson is a lecturer in the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University and is the managing editor of the Romanic Review, a journal devoted to romance literatures. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia. She specializes in nineteenth-century literature and particularly in the novel. She has published essays on Honoré de Balzac, Heinrich Heine, and on social mobility in nineteenth-century literature. Currently, she is working on a book on Balzac.

Read an Excerpt

From Sarah Juliette Sasson’s Introduction to The Scarlet Pimpernel

The volume we are presenting here is the first of a series of ten novels published between 1905 and 1940 that present the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel. This first volume is certainly the most famous and widely read of them all and has had its own fabulous destiny. For it paves the way for the future plots, introduces the readers to the main characters, and vividly depicts and opposes the two theaters of the action: France and England, only a few hours apart by boat, but symbolizing two completely different universes. The date is September 1792, after the infamous September Massacres. The revolutionaries have decided to start history anew. In a few months, a new calendar will be established, beginning with l’An I (the Year I). Each month is rebaptized and given a new name selected for its agrarian associations, and the old Christian names are thrown out. France will become an ill-famed regicide regime with the public execution of King Louis XVI, on January 21, 1793. The bloodiest phase of the French Revolution, the so-called Reign of Terror (or simply the Terror), will soon begin. The Scarlet Pimpernel cycle takes place during these particularly brutal years—from September 1792 to the fall of the radical revolutionary Maximilien de Robespierre in July 1794. In certain episodes, the fictional actions combine with authentic historical events: In the novel Eldorado, for example, the Scarlet Pimpernel will be instrumental in the escape of the young dauphin, Louis XVII, whose fate has fueled speculation for more than two centuries.

In Baroness Orczy’s imagination, France is a country in chaos; a mob runs amok, mercilessly murdering its former elite, the aristocrats. The fact that the action starts in September 1792 is significant; we, as readers, do not learn much about the French Revolution of 1789—its hopes, ideologies, and ethos. Instead, we are plunged into the violent and cruel context of the Terror. Here are the first lines of the novel:

A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. . . . During the greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at its ghastly work: all that France had boasted of in the past centuries, of ancient names, and blue blood, had paid toll to her desire for liberty and for fraternity. The carnage had only ceased at this late hour of the day because there were other more interesting sights for the people to witness . . . and so the crowd rushed away from the Place de Grève and made for the various barricades in order to watch this interesting and amusing sight.

We are in the thick of the action, shoulder to shoulder with the crowd, surrounded by a repulsive throng, immersed in a gruesome spectacle. Soon we witness an unequal yet fascinating cat-and-mouse game between the crowd and the helpless aristocrats pathetically attempting to go past the barricade and leave the city. The aristocrats are purposely and sadistically let go, taste freedom for a few moments of intense relief, and are apprehended minutes later—unless, thanks to some miraculous intervention of the Scarlet Pimpernel, they vanish into thin air before the guards’ very noses. Clearly a hero is needed, and these very first images give us the dramatic setup for the Scarlet Pimpernel’s extraordinary deeds. In the first minutes of the 1934 film adaptation of the novel, the guillotine presides over the scene as a ghastly and imposing apparition. We watch aristocrats being dragged from their tumbrils and executed at the regular intervals of a factory production line. Each falling head is followed by hurrahs; each provokes a few seconds of attention from the tricoteuses, those spiteful witches who raise their heads from their knitting for a few seconds to absorb the spectacle before taking up their needles again.

On the other side of the Channel, however, the picture is completely different. Not only do beauty and elegance reign, but courage, heroism, and wit ultimately prevail. The Scarlet Pimpernel introduces a mythical English hero, one who has indeed all the qualities of a typical avenger; he is what critics of popular novels call a "Promethean hero.” Although his identity must remain secret, he stirs passions in both France and England, and his name is on everyone’s lips. Well-known to the British public, he inspires fashions and trends:

“Heard of the Scarlet Pimpernel ? . . . Faith, man! we talk of nothing else. . . . We have hats ‘à la Scarlet Pimpernel’; our horses are called ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’; at the Prince of Wales’ supper party the other night we had a ‘soufflé à la Scarlet Pimpernel.’. . . Lud! . . . the other day I ordered at my milliner’s a blue dress trimmed with green, and bless me, if she did not call that ‘à la Scarlet Pimpernel’.”

But most important, like all great and fearless heroes, the Pimpernel leaves a trademark sign after every act of bravery. His passing is indicated by papers printed with a humble red flower, a “scarlet pimpernel,” a gesture that not only shows his debonair demeanor but also a playful taste for risk-taking. An aristocrat himself, the Pimpernel leads a group of nineteen wellborn young men, ready to sacrifice themselves for the perilous yet exhilarating task of snatching endangered French aristocrats from the bloody grip of the revolution. The Scarlet Pimpernel presents such rescues as moral actions, and also as an exciting sport. The Pimpernel and his men behave like knights, but the reader will find neither reflection nor justification for their actions in the text. Their deeper motivation is not expressed; explanations are unnecessary.