Baroness Orczy's Old Man in the Corner: The Old Man in the Corner / The Case of Miss Elliott / The Glasgow Mystery

by Emmuska Orczy

Baroness Emma Orczy, best known for her Scarlet Pimpernel stories, also wrote popular detective stories. This volume includes her two books, The Old Man in the Corner and The Case of Miss Elliott, both of which relate the logical theorizing of the anonymous Old Man as he discusses (and solves) mysterious crimes with a "lady journalist." Orczy initially wrote 13 short stories featuring this unusual detective, but only included 12 of the stories when they finally were bound in a single volume (with minor story modifications). The missing 13th story, The Glasgow Mystery, is here included separately as it first appeared in the Royal Magazine in 1901.

Genres: Mystery, British Literature

430 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 2010

About the author

Full name: Emma ("Emmuska") Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi was a Hungarian-British novelist, best remembered as the author of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1905). Baroness Orczy's sequels to the novel were less successful. She was also an artist, and her works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, London. Her first venture into fiction was with crime stories. Among her most popular characters was The Old Man in the Corner, who was featured in a series of twelve British movies from 1924, starring Rolf Leslie.

Baroness Emmuska Orczy was born in Tarnaörs, Hungary, as the only daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a noted composer and conductor, and his wife Emma. Her father was a friend of such composers as Wagner, Liszt, and Gounod. Orczy moved with her parents from Budapest to Brussels and then to London, learning to speak English at the age of fifteen. She was educated in convent schools in Brussels and Paris. In London she studied at the West London School of Art. Orczy married in 1894 Montague Barstow, whom she had met while studying at the Heatherby School of Art. Together they started to produce book and magazine illustrations and published an edition of Hungarian folktales.

Orczy's first detective stories appeared in magazines. As a writer she became famous in 1903 with the stage version of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Reviews

[Carolyn]

The Old Man in the Corner is an entertaining collection of stories somewhat in the style of Agatha Christie. I enjoyed the stories and found the surprise ending to be entertaining. I've never read any of the Scarlet Pimpernel books, and this one does not make me want to go read them, but she created a memorable character here.