The Scarlet Pimpernel

Baroness Emmuska Orczy wrote roughly a dozen novels and short story collections featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel between 1905 and 1940. The premise stays remarkably consistent. Sir Percy Blakeney, an outwardly foolish English baronet, secretly leads a small League of fellow aristocrats in daring rescues of French nobles condemned to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. His estranged wife Marguerite, a former French actress, eventually becomes his closest collaborator. His permanent antagonist is the relentless Republican agent Chauvelin. Notable books include the original Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), El Dorado (1913), The Elusive Pimpernel, Sir Percy Hits Back, Lord Tony's Wife, Mam'zelle Guillotine, and the late short story collection The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Pimpernel and Rosemary is an unusual outlier, set in 1920s Hungary with a modern Blakeney descendant. The series essentially invented the masked-aristocrat adventure-hero template later borrowed by Zorro and Batman.