 Orczy did not publish her Pimpernel stories as a strict chronological series, and in fact, the settings of the books in their publication sequence may vary forward or backward in time by months or centuries.While some readers enjoy following the author's development of the Pimpernel character as it was realised, others prefer to read the stories in historical sequence.Taking into account occasional discrepancies in the dates of events (real and fictional) referred to in the stories, the following is an approximate chronological listing of Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel novels and short stories