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 Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was a British novelist, playwright and artist. She was born on 23 September 1865 in Tarnaörs, Heves Country, Hungary to Baron Felix Orczy de Orczi and Countess Emma Wass von Szentegyed und Czege.
In 1868 her family left Hungary, fearful of a peasant revolution, and lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris. While in Paris Emmuska studied music but found little success. In 1880 the family again moved, this time to London, where they lodged with Francis Pichler. Emmuska attended West London School of Art and then Heatherley’s School of Fine Art.
In 1894 Emmuska married a young illustrator by the name of Montague MacLean Barstow (whom she had met while at art school) and in 1899 they bore a son, John Montague Orczy-Barstow.
Shortly after the birth of her son Emmuska began writing. Her first novel, The Emperor’s Candlesticks (1899), was a failure, but she continued writing a series of detective stories in the Royal Magazine and thus garnered a small following.
She wrote another novel in 1901 entitled In Mary’s Reign, which did better than her first.
Emmuska is most famous, however, for her series featuring The Scarlet Pimpernel. The book was a novelisation of her husband’s play (which was based on one of her short stories) written in 1903, and the success generated from the highly successful theatrical performance spurned sales tremendously for the novel.
She went on to write over a dozen sequels to the novel of which the first I Will Repay (1906) was the most popular.
Baroness Emmuska Orczy died on 12 November 1947, seven years after the last Pimpernel book, Mam’zelle Guillotine, was published.
Although she was never destined to be a painter, some of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. [edit]
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