Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A Child of the Revolution

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. Despite difficulty, sources with sufficient coverage to meet WP:NBOOK were eventually identified. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 02:02, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A Child of the Revolution (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Article is reliant upon a single citation, which was added in September 2023 without adding additional content. I have done a quick Google search and Google Scholar search but have been unable to find more reliable sources. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 02:35, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Literature and United Kingdom. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 05:46, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm a little surprised how little I'm finding. Two things so far:
  • Accordng to the index, Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel: A Publishing History mentions A Child of the Revolution on p. 146 and p. 248; it's possible there is significant coverage there but I can't access it.
  • This article mentions "A Child of the Revolution, seul opus non traduit de la série" ["the only work not translated in the series", presumably meaning not translated into French] as an example of a Pimpernel novel with an important love story, there's no significant coverage.

I want to look for reviews from 1932 but haven't found a good database yet. It's an unfortunate gap where things are copyrighted but not widely popular/accessible. The one source in the article is so good it feels like a WP:NBOOK pass should be possible...! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 00:06, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

OK, checking ProQuest Historical Newspapers I found a surprising amount of "not much":

• NYT "Book Notes" Dec 23, 1931, says only "Other works of fiction to be issued during February under the Doubleday, Doran imprint include ... "A Child of the Revolution" by Baroness Orczy." (fun historical coincidence, the first book in this list is A Brave New World!).
• A half dozen lists of books available in China in the 30s, this one listed also
• "Meet the Baronness Orczy", 1934 says only "I did ask what books she had written lately. 'Well, you see, so many of my readers wrote to me and implored me to write more about the same characters in The Scarlet Pimpernel series, so I wrote A Child of the Revolution to please them. You would not believe how many people write to me from all over the world.'"
• The only actual review I can find traces off is one by Jerry Siegel (the creator of Superman) in his high school newspaper. I find this quite intriguing and it would certainly be sigcov but of course a high school paper is not an RS.
  • Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters & the Birth of the Comic Book "He wrote occasional book reviews for The Torch, breathless advertisements for the most socially acceptable of the books he loved. “The Reign of Terror— the guillotine descending swiftly on innocent and guilty alike. The only hope lies in the aid of the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel,’ a mysterious Englishman who risks his life to save . . . the unjustly condemned.” Surely no one else on the wise-ass Torch staff would have gushed so over Baroness Orczy’s Child of the Revolution, but Jerry loved the Pimpernel and Zorro and all those secret heroes who masquerade as mild-mannered citizens." (65-6)
  • "Looking for Lois Lane": "It soon became clear Siegel was the mysterious author behind certain pieces that appeared in the Torch. One was a review of the Baroness Orczy's "A Child of the Revolution" (1932), the last in a series of novels about an English nobleman who dons mask and costume nights to fight for the oppressed . . . as the Scarlet Pimpernel."

I can't shake the feeling that this is the sort of book which ought to have gotten some reviews in 1931, but the evidence is really against me! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:00, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge. Okay, after having done a bunch of digging and checking out some of the other Pimpernel novel articles, I'd like to propose that actually an appropriate outcome here would be the creation of List of Scarlet Pimpernel novels, structured as a prose list (with headings) which provides brief plot summaries of each novel. The series overall certainly gets all kind of coverage! There can be links out to 'main' articles for the subset of these novels which have more substantial independent coverage. If the consensus is to create this list article, I volunteer to make it (please ping me). ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:07, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: I agree with @LEvalyn that there seems to surprisingly little coverage, especially compared to the other books in this series, but after a bit of digging, I was able to find three reviews in The Liverpool Daily Post, The Charleston Daily Mail and The New York Times (final page, under the header "Paris and the Terror"), which is sufficient to meet WP:NBOOK. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:44, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you for these finds!! I agree that this now an NBOOK keep, and frankly this raises my confidence that the other currently-unsourced Pimpernel novels will have enough coverage too. For my own personal improvement, would you mind sharing where/how you looked in order to find these? (Maybe on my talk page if it's too off topic here?) I tried the Wikipedia Library but I must not have been using the right queries or trying the right places, so I'd love to know what worked for you. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 21:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I've responded on your talk page. Thanks, ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 00:25, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.