Editing Baroness Orczy (section)

==Writing career==
They had very little money and Orczy started to work with her husband as a translator and an illustrator to supplement his meager earnings. John Montague Orczy-Barstow, their only child, was born on 25 February 1899 (died 1969). She started writing soon after his birth, but her first novel, ''[[The Emperor's Candlesticks]]'' (1899), was a failure. She did, however, find a small following with a series of [[detective stories]] in the ''[[Royal Magazine]]''. Her next novel, ''[[In Mary's Reign]]'' (1901), did better.

In 1903, she and her husband wrote ''[[The Scarlet Pimpernel]]'', a play based on one of her short stories about an English aristocrat, Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., who rescued French aristocrats from the [[French Revolution]]. She had conceived the character while standing on a platform on the [[London Underground]].<ref>{{Cite news |title=Beat it Batman – this foppish baronet was the world's first superhero |last=Hodgkinson |first=Thomas W |newspaper=The Guardian |date=9 March 2022 |access-date=13 March 2022|url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/09/batman-wonder-woman-black-widow-worlds-first-superhero-scarlet-pimpernel-orczy}}</ref> She submitted her novelisation of the story under the same title to 12 publishers. While the couple waited for the decisions of these publishers, [[Fred Terry]] and [[Julia Neilson]] accepted the play for production in London's [[West End theatre|West End]]. Initially, it drew small audiences, but the play ran for four years in London, and broke many stage records, eventually playing more than 2,000 performances and becoming one of the most popular shows staged in Britain. It was translated and produced in other countries and underwent several revivals. This theatrical success generated huge sales for the novel. The couple moved to Thanet, Kent.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865 – 1947)|url=https://kent-maps.online/20c/20c-orczy-biography/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-10-23|website=kent-maps.online|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211023190229/https://kent-maps.online/20c/20c-orczy-biography/ |archive-date=23 October 2021 }}</ref>

Introducing the notion of a "hero with a [[secret identity]]" into popular culture, the Scarlet Pimpernel exhibits characteristics that would become standard superhero conventions, including the penchant for disguise, use of a signature weapon (sword), ability to out-think and outwit his adversaries, and a calling card (he leaves behind a [[Anagallis arvensis|scarlet pimpernel]] at each of his interventions).<ref name="Robb">{{cite book|last1=Robb|first1=Brian J.|title=A Brief History of Superheroes: From Superman to the Avengers, the Evolution of Comic Book Legends|date=May 2014|publisher=Hachette UK|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wCSfBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT15|page=15|isbn=9781472110701}}</ref> By drawing attention to his alter ego, Blakeney hides behind his public face as a slow-thinking, foppish playboy, and he also establishes a network of supporters, The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who aid his endeavours.<ref name="Robb"/><ref>{{cite book |title=Masquerade: Essays on Tradition and Innovation Worldwide |editor-first=Deborah |editor-last=Bell |chapter=The (Super) Hero's Masquerade |first=Ron |last=Naversen |pages=217''ff'' |publisher=McFarland |year=2015 |isbn=978-0-7864-7646-6}}</ref>

Orczy went on to write over a dozen sequels featuring Sir Percy Blakeney, his family, and the other members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, of which the first, ''[[I Will Repay (novel)|I Will Repay]]'' (1906), was the most popular. The last Pimpernel book, ''[[Mam'zelle Guillotine]]'', was published in 1940. None of her three subsequent plays matched the success of ''The Scarlet Pimpernel''. She also wrote popular mystery fiction and many adventure romances. Her ''[[Lady Molly of Scotland Yard]]'' was an early example of a female detective as the main character. Other popular detective stories featured ''[[The Old Man in the Corner]]'', a sleuth who chiefly used logic to solve crimes. Orczy was a founding member of the [[Detection Club]] (1930).

Orczy's novels were racy, mannered melodramas and she favoured historical fiction. Critic [[Mary Cadogan]] states, "Orczy's books are highly wrought and intensely atmospheric".<ref name="mc">{{cite book|first=Mary |last=Cadogan |chapter=Orczy, Baroness |title=Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers|editor-first=Aruna |editor-last=Vasudevan |edition=3rd |location=London |publisher=St. James Press |date=1994 |pages=499–501 |isbn=1558621806}}</ref> In ''[[The Nest of the Sparrowhawk]]'' (1909), for example, a malicious guardian in Puritan Kent tricks his beautiful, wealthy young ward into marrying him by disguising himself as an exiled French prince. He persuades his widowed sister-in-law to abet him in this plot, in which she unwittingly disgraces one of her long-lost sons and finds the other murdered by the villain. Even though this novel had no link to ''[[The Scarlet Pimpernel]]'' other than its shared authorship, the publisher advertised it as part of "The Scarlet Pimpernel Series".