The family lived in their ancestral home; a great, rambling farmhouse on the river Tarna. Emmuska's memories of the time were of sophisticated parties, sparkling conversation, joyful dancing and gypsy music. But soon fear of a peasant uprising meant their moving to Budapest and then 12 years of semi-nomadic travels across Europe.
Arriving in London in 1880 Emmuska, aged 15, was studying painting and, a few years later, had them chosen for exhibition at the Royal Academy.
London, she felt, was home, her spiritual birthplace.
Art school also provided a husband. It was here she met a young illustrator, Montague Barstow, the son of an English clergyman.
Fearful of mediocrity she plunged headlong into a writing career. And in the weeks after the birth of her son wrote the adventure classic for which she is so famed: The Scarlet Pimpernel. Originally rejected, after being re-worked as a successful play it was published as a book in 1905 and was an instant best-seller.
In the coming years they lived on an estate in Kent, a busy and tasteful London home and an extravagant villa in Monte Carlo. All the while Emmuska's pen continued to write adventures for that elusive hero; Sir Percy Blakeney.
In 1934, the famed movie producer Alexander Korda turned it into a film starring Leslie Howard. The quintessential Pimpernel of everyone's imagination now made visual reality.
Baroness Orczy at the age of 82, died on November 12th, 1947 at Henley-on-Thames in South Oxfordshire.
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