The Laughing Cavalier
Published in 1913, this historical adventure invents an ancestor for the Scarlet Pimpernel and sets him loose in the Holland of 1623. The hero is a devil-may-care mercenary whom Orczy claimed was the subject of Frans Hals’s famous portrait that gives the book its name. Hired as part of a plot against a wealthy merchant’s family, he is ordered to carry off the merchant’s daughter, Gilda Beresteyn, only to be pulled between the conspiracy that employs him and his growing sense of honor. Duels, abductions, and shifting loyalties fill out a tale meant to explain where Sir Percy Blakeney’s daring came from. Free PDF and EPUB edition available here.
About the Author
Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865 to 1947) was a Hungarian-born British author who settled in London and made her name with The Scarlet Pimpernel. Her sweeping romances of the French Revolution created one of fiction’s first masked heroes and shaped a century of adventure storytelling.
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