The Scarlet Pimpernel

An English fop with the finest lace in London leads a league that snatches aristocrats from the guillotine, and the Republic's cleverest agent is set on finding out who he is. Orczy's book was turned down by a dozen publishers; she and her husband staged it as a play first, it ran for four years, and the novel then sold in the millions — the first masked-hero double life in modern fiction, ancestor of every one since.