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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
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Listings for Author:  

Emmuska Orczy

 

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Baroness Emmuska Orczy : The Scarlet Pimpernel

in 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' there was the key line, 'That demmed elusive Pimpernel'; and, of course, 'demmed' would never do, so Mother substituted 'awful'. I think she deliberately chose a word which did not scan and which obviously was not the original one... 'The Scarlet Pimpernel', incidentally, was another great favourite of Mother's...

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Beer      Print: Book

  

Emmuska, Baroness Orczy : Scarlet Pimpernel, The

'Her reading as a child was voracious, although her late start in learning to read for herself left her with a cosy taste for being read to. Her governess hads read aloud to her the story of Perseus and "Jungle Jinks" and most things in between. Once she read for herself, she had a passion for George Macdonald: his Curdie was one of her heroes. She loved Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel", and E. Nesbit's books. She read Dickens exhaustively as a child and, as a result, could not read him as a young adult: "There is no more oxygen left, for me, anywhere in the atmosphere of his writings".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen      Print: Book

  

Emmuska Orczy : 

'I wrote endless imitations, though I never thought them to be imitations but, rather wonderfully original things, like eggs laid by tigers. They were imitations of anything I happened to be reading at the time: Sir Thomas Brown, de Quincey, Henry Newbolt, the Ballads, Blake, Baroness Orczy, Marlowe, Chums, the Imagists, the Bible, Poe, Keats, Lawrence, Anon., and Shakespeare. A mixed lot as you see, and randomly remembered'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Dylan Thomas      Print: Book

 

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