The Scarlet Pimpernel has quite a following, even though it was created a century ago.

One of the best sites is Blakeney Manor:

www.blakeneymanor.com

There you can explore stills from the various film versions, download books, see images from previous printings, compare the information in the novel to French revolutionary history, and find links to other sites.

Georgette Heyer fans (you know who you are, but if you haven’t discovered Heyer yet, lose no time—she is the great writer of 18th-century and Regency romances) can find more on her life and work at the link below. Because of our confusing copyright law, The Black Moth is the only Heyer novel guaranteed to be in the public domain in the United States.

More on Georgette Heyer

My personal favorites are the 18th-century novels, especially These Old Shades and its sequel, Devil’s Cub; The Masqueraders; and The Talisman Ring. Standouts among the Regencies include The Grand Sophy, Faro’s Daughter, Frederica, Sprig Muslin, Sylvester, and the quirky A Civil Contract, but almost all have secondary characters who will stay in your mind for days.

For good romance without sword fights and knee breeches, check out the website of my pal and critique partner Diana Holquist. Her first two volumes in the One True Love series are already in print, and the third is due in the fall of 2008. (A Gypsy psychic can tell your One True Love just by touching you. Sound good? Ah, but suppose it's not your spouse? Or your parents divorce when you're only five because you blurted out that they weren't perfectly matched? Or you can't discover your own true love unless you're willing to surrender your powers? Not looking so good now, right?)

And for a take on The Scarlet Pimpernel that's completely different from mine, see Lauren Willig's "Pink Carnation" series. You’ll find more than a few Heyer references in these books, too, and the series is so much fun I can (almost) forgive the author for killing off Lord Tony...

Pink Carnation website

A great resource for writers (who own Macs—it runs on OS 10.4 and  10.5) is Storyist, a combined data base/word processing program that lets you manage characters, plot threads, settings, and notes while typing your manuscript in its main window. For more information, including screen shots,  see the Storyist website. And for general writing discussions as well as software-specific problems (including a group novel that never seems to get off the ground), see its users' forums.