The Scarlet Pimpernel

Why it’s on the list: During the Terror, an English aristocrat smuggles condemned French nobles out of Paris under the Revolutionary Tribunal’s nose, signing his work with a small red flower, while playing an idle fop so convincingly in London that his own wife despises him. The origin of the secret-identity hero — Zorro and Batman descend from it — and a usefully uncomfortable one: the villains of the French Revolution are the revolutionaries.

Where I heard about it

• Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, Texas — on its sixth-grade reading list, posted by the Classic Learning Test in September 2026 as an example of what a classical curriculum assigns. The full eight-year sequence is on Founders Classical Academy Reading List.

Connections

• Founders Classical Academy Reading List — the curriculum this came from; 56 unique titles across 5th through 12th grade.
• Classical Education — the movement whose canon this list is.
• Baroness Emmuska Orczy
• French Revolution
• Literature