Ah! This is one of my favorites! I was introduced to the Jane Seymour version at age ten and absolutely fell in love with the movie, then the books soon after. ♥
And no wonder! I love all three of the pictured adaptations, though probably the 1935 Leslie Howard / Merle Oberon version just a teeny tiny fraction better than the others. Howard's segue from brainless fop to brilliant fencer is so incredibly smooth; it's in his interpretation that both sides of Sir Percy best come together in one person (for me). But there's no way anybody canNOT fall in love with Anthony Andrews's Sir Percy, either -- and Jane Seymour's Marguerite -- and, hey, Ian McKellen as Chauvelin at his most diabolical (and yet, fallible)?! Give me more of that, any day of the week. Then again, I really also like what Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth McGovern do with their parts (plus Martin Shaw as Chauvelin ... gosh, he almost makes me like the guy. Well, almost.), even if the scripts of that series take enormous license with the book(s). But for once, at least they didn't stop at book 1!
I was such a creature until about 3 years ago? Until then I'd never even known what Scarlet Pimpernel was supposed to be. Enjoyed the book once I figured it out though. :D
Oh, I envy you that moment of discovery! Like Darth Pony, I first read the book only after having seen a screen adaptation (Richard E. Grant in my case, to be followed in short order by the Anthony Andrews one), so I went into the book fully knowing what to expect -- and wondering how I could possibly have missed this in my mid-teens "swashbucklers" phase. That said, I probably even enjoyed certain scenes in the books a bit more for knowing what was in store; I think Sir Percy would have annoyed the heck out of me if I hadn't known beforehand. (Obviously, that's what the movies all do differently -- in all of them we *see* Sir Percy acting as the Scarlet Pimpernel in the opening scenes, before we ever get to Marguerite, the encounter with the Comtesse de Tournay, and the scenes at the Grenville ball.) Still, in all of the screen adaptations the focus is somewhat more on "him" than on "her", so when I first read the book it really struck me to find the whole thing narrated almost exclusively from Marguerite's POV, even if in a third person narrative voice.
I just re-read my review of it, and as I remembered, it seems I never doubted the identity of the Pimpernel, but I didn't identify in the review why I found it so easy to ... unmask him. But I did have a great time reading it - my review makes that clear too. Nice to know I remember SOME things accurately! :)
From what you say here about the adaptations, I'm very glad not to have seen any of them before reading the book, in spite of not being surprised by the unmasking. At least, even though I thought I knew, there was always a possibility of being wrong, and that makes any story more exciting.
Yes, I suppose that's true -- reading the book already knowing what' what, it admittedly never even occurred to me to wonder how easy it would be for a reader to figure things out on their own.
Then again, now finally also having read "The Old Man in the Corner", it's hard to miss the similarities, for however different the stories are in terms of setting and topic. And given Marguerite's prominent role, I definitely also want to read "Lady Molly of Scotland Yard" -- I wonder what she did with a "real" female lead in a classic detective story setting (since "the young reporter" is -- except in one story -- decidedly Watson to "the Old Man"'s Holmes).
I've just come across The Old Man in the Corner this year in my reading of mystery's history and I was/am curious to read it having enjoyed TSP as much as I did. Not sure I've heard of Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, but if Marguerite's in it, I'm definitely interested; I was never sure what I was meant to think of her in TCP, and I'd like the chance to get more information.
"Lady Molly of Scotland Yard" is a collection of stories about a female detective; Martin Edwards mentions it in "The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books." Marguerite Blakeney isn't her (sorry for the misunderstanding) -- I just meant to say, given with how much independence Orczy endows Marguerite, I'm curious how she crafted the character of Lady Molly ... even if, as Edwards notes, Lady Molly isn't "allowed" to stay single but ends up marrying eventually (but that, in the early 1900s, surely just would have been par for the course!).
Yes, I did listen (this time) -- I actually compared pretty much all of the versions available on Audible.de (don't know whether they are the same as on Audible.com) and eventually settled on the Stephen Crossly version shown at the top of my review, which indeed turned out to be a fine reading.
At some point, after I'd heard Crossly do Sir Percy's voice a couple of times, it occurred to me that his voice is somewhat darker than Sir Percy's is in my head; probably because all of the actors who portray the character in my favorite movie adaptations have slightly higher speaking voices than Crossly. (Yet another way those screen versions shaped my perception of the character even before I'd ever read the book, I suppose -- incidentally, the preview clips available on Audible.de pretty much all are for the "west gate" / Sergeant Bibot passage at the beginning of the book, and consequently I picked this particular audio because I liked Crossly's reading of that passage better than any of the others available.) But this is definitely an "it's not you, it's me" thing, and Crossly captures the book's subtle underlying tone of irony to perfection.
From what you say here about the adaptations, I'm very glad not to have seen any of them before reading the book, in spite of not being surprised by the unmasking. At least, even though I thought I knew, there was always a possibility of being wrong, and that makes any story more exciting.
Then again, now finally also having read "The Old Man in the Corner", it's hard to miss the similarities, for however different the stories are in terms of setting and topic. And given Marguerite's prominent role, I definitely also want to read "Lady Molly of Scotland Yard" -- I wonder what she did with a "real" female lead in a classic detective story setting (since "the young reporter" is -- except in one story -- decidedly Watson to "the Old Man"'s Holmes).
http://themisathena.booklikes.com/post/1638456/london-s-first-armchair-detective
"Lady Molly of Scotland Yard" is a collection of stories about a female detective; Martin Edwards mentions it in "The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books." Marguerite Blakeney isn't her (sorry for the misunderstanding) -- I just meant to say, given with how much independence Orczy endows Marguerite, I'm curious how she crafted the character of Lady Molly ... even if, as Edwards notes, Lady Molly isn't "allowed" to stay single but ends up marrying eventually (but that, in the early 1900s, surely just would have been par for the course!).
At some point, after I'd heard Crossly do Sir Percy's voice a couple of times, it occurred to me that his voice is somewhat darker than Sir Percy's is in my head; probably because all of the actors who portray the character in my favorite movie adaptations have slightly higher speaking voices than Crossly. (Yet another way those screen versions shaped my perception of the character even before I'd ever read the book, I suppose -- incidentally, the preview clips available on Audible.de pretty much all are for the "west gate" / Sergeant Bibot passage at the beginning of the book, and consequently I picked this particular audio because I liked Crossly's reading of that passage better than any of the others available.) But this is definitely an "it's not you, it's me" thing, and Crossly captures the book's subtle underlying tone of irony to perfection.