Emma Orczy

A Bride of the Plains Emma Orczy

The story is set in Hungary and the scene is laid in a village close to the Maros. On this particular fourteenth of September it is Andor's turn to go unwillingly into the army for three years. On the eve preceding it, at the village merrymaking, as the whole population spends its last happy hours trying to forget the hideous events that will occur in the morning, he tokens himself to Elsa the village beauty. When Andor returns from Bosnia, his village has changed, but so has he. Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was a Hungarian-born British novelist, playwright and artist of noble origin. She is most known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel. In 1903, Orczy and her husband wrote a play based on one of her short stories about an English aristocrat, Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., who rescued French aristocrats from the French Revolution: The Scarlet Pimpernel. The play was accepted for production in the West End and though initially drew only small audiences, it ran four years, broke many stage records, was translated and produced in other countries, and underwent several revivals. This theatrical success generated huge sales for the novel and Orczy went on to write over a dozen sequels. Orczy's novels were racy, mannered melodramas and she favored historical fiction.