Baroness Orczy

Baroness Emma Orczy (1865–1947) was a Hungarian-born British author. Fleeing a peasant uprising, her aristocratic family settled in London in 1880. After studying art, she married illustrator Henry Barstow in 1894. Facing financial hardship, she turned to writing, pioneering the armchair detective trope with The Old Man in the Corner (1901). Her signature success came with The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), co-adapted first as a smash 1904 stage play. A staunch British imperialist, she spearheaded the WWI White Feather Campaign to promote military enlistment. Orczy published her memoir, Links in the Chain of Life, shortly before dying in Oxfordshire.