The Scarlet Pimpernel

The first and most successful in the Baroness&#146;s series of books that feature Percy Blakeney who leads a double life as an English fop and a swashbuckling rescuer of aristocrats <i>The Scarlet Pimpernel</i> was the blueprint for what became known as the masked-avenger genre. As Anne Perry writes in her Introduction the novel &#147;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.&#148;