My Cultural Diet

I’ll be honest, I had always disregarded The Scarlet Pimpernel based on its title alone. But then I heard my wife — who, for the record, has excellent taste in books — recommend it to a friend who was looking for something enjoyable to read, and decided to finally give it a shot. Baroness Orczy’s prose is just about as florid as it gets, especially when describing Lady Blakeney’s intense emotional states, and her equally florid descriptions of the French Revolution’s cruelties make plainly evident her own pro-aristocracy sentiments. Modern readers steeped in superhero stories, which are all but unavoidable these days, will probably see every twist and reveal coming from a mile away. Indeed, Stan Lee himself claimed that The Scarlet Pimpernel, with its costumes and secret identities, was the very first superhero story. All that said, I was never not entertained by the novel’s proceedings, and it does possess a certain dashing quality that I’m sure blew readers’ minds back in 1905.

I may earn an affiliate commission on items you buy through Opus. These commissions will go directly to support the site and my blogging.