Pimpernel and Rosemary

Pimpernel and Rosemary was published in 1924 and is the odd one out in the Scarlet Pimpernel sequence. The setting is no longer Revolutionary France. The novel takes place in early 1920s Hungary in the aftermath of the First World War, with a modern descendant of Sir Percy Blakeney, also nicknamed Pimpernel, operating on behalf of British intelligence and Hungarian aristocrats targeted by the post-war Communist regime under Béla Kun.

The book is essentially Orczy’s attempt to update her successful franchise for a contemporary setting. The mechanism is recognizable. A glamorous noble background, a secret identity, daring rescues across an unstable post-war political landscape, a romantic subplot with an Englishwoman named Rosemary. The contemporary setting jars some readers who came to the series for its eighteenth-century atmosphere, and the political content is unmistakably colored by Orczy’s own conservatism. As an experiment in extending the Pimpernel concept across a longer historical timeline, the book is genuinely interesting. As a standalone novel it has not aged especially well.