The Scarlet Pimpernel [with Biographical Introduction]

"The Scarlet Pimpernel" is considered one of the greatest adventure novels of all time. It is the first in a series of stories about Percy Blakeney, an Englishman in France during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, who lives a double life as an English aristocrat and a swashbuckling masked rescuer of French aristocrats from the guillotine. "The Scarlet Pimpernel" is the classic tale of action and adventure that literally invented the genre of the masked avenger.