Emmuska Orczy

Baroness Emmuska Orczy ("Emma Orczy") is best known as the author of the early swashbuckling novels, The Scarlet Pimpernel and sequels. Although politically retrograde, Orczy was an influential writer.

Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel novels invented and popularized the "secret identity protagonist": The Scarlet Pimpernel was an adventurer by night, rescuing French nobility from the ravening murderous hordes of the French Revolution; and a foppish British nobleman (Sir Percy Blakeney) by day. Zorro and Batman are significant descendants, and secret leagues of colleagues also showed up in her work. The original works have been adapted into numerous film and TV productions.

One of her novels featured an early female detective, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard.

Orczy also wrote vaguely gothic-style ghost stories, and collected and translated various Hungarian folk and fairy tales.