The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - DW's Library

Dennis Wheatley's Library - modern first editions
Baroness Orczy

DW’s copy of Orczy’s ‘The Elusive Pimpernel’ (1908)

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DW’s copy of Orczy’s ‘The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel’ (1909)

Signed to DW and accompanied by a letter from Baroness D’Orczy dated 28.vii.35.

On sale from Peter Harrington (June 2022) for £4,500

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DW had ten of Baroness Orczy’s books, including (naturally) a signed first edition of ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’.

They were friends, and when DW devised eight ‘Mystery Rooms’ for the Daily Mail’s Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia in 1938, one of the rooms that he created (with the idea that visitors would try to guess, for a prize, which celebrity of the day might have lived in which room) was a reception room that would befit Baroness Orczy.

He admired her creation of the Pimpernel, saying :

‘ … My favourites were Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda, Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. I would so much have liked to have written one of these three, as each gave a word to the English language – ‘Musketeer’, ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ and ‘Ruritania’.

(Officer and Temporary Gentleman, page 145)

References : Officer and Temporary Gentleman, pp 99,145
The Dennis Wheatley website: DW's Mystery Rooms
Phil Baker pp 42,60,111,377,520,591

Provenance : ‘The Elusive Pimpernel’ Private collection

‘The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel’ with thanks to Peter Harrington, London