Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L Sayers | Books | guardian.co.uk

Dorothy L Sayers




* Tuesday July 22 2008 15:39 BST

1893-1957

"The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless."
Birthplace

The headmaster's house at Christchurch Cathedral School, Oxford. Her father was the headmaster.
Education

Godolphin School in Salisbury, then on to Somerville College, Oxford, with a scholarship. One of the first women to graduate from Oxford, she left in 1915 with a first class honours degree in modern languages.
Other jobs

From 1922 to 1931 she was a copywriter at the London advertising agency, Bensons. While she apparently enjoyed the work and was good at it, in later essays she robustly condemned the business of creating need where none existed. Nevertheless, she admired the copywriter's deft use of English: "the richest, noblest, most flexible and sensitive language ever written or spoken."
Did you know?

Sayers was a keen motorbike rider, and has earned quiet respect in certain circles for the faultless descriptions of these machines in her books.
Critical verdict

Part of the Golden Age of mystery writers working between the wars, Sayers is often credited as the most intelligent of them all. Certainly her plots are ingenious and intricate, and she relishes technical detail and literary quotation, although QD Leavis once cuttingly remarked "She displays knowingness about literature without any sensitiveness to it or any feeling for quality". Other critics have noted an occasional tendency to become bogged down in detail, as in the involved plot of The Five Red Herrings (1931).Her first novel, Whose Body (1923), introduced the world to the aristocratic crime fighter Lord Peter Wimsey, who featured in 14 subsequent novels and short stories. Athletic, scholarly, stylish and sharp, Lord Peter developed over the course of the books into a fully rounded and psychologically complex character, utterly adored by his public. By the late 1930s Sayers vowed there would be no more Wimsey novels, but on her death an unfinished book, Thrones, Dominations, was found, and completed by the author Jill Paton Walsh. Other works starred the travelling salesman Montague Egg, but Wimsey remained her most popular creation.A passionate Anglican, she also wrote extensive theological essays, and seven plays, causing a stir with The Man Born to Be King (1940), by making Christ speak modern English.In addition to the plays, essays and books there were endless letters, reviews and some early feminist writing. She also taught herself old Italian and her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy is still in print today.
Recommended works

Nine Tailors (1934), an atmospheric tale of stolen jewels, faceless corpses and bell-ringing set in the fens of Sayers's childhood, is generally felt to be one of the best of the Wimsey stories. Sayers stopped halfway through writing it to dash off the satirical Murder Must Advertise (1933) because she had to meet a deadline and didn't want to rush her pet project.The introduction of detective story writer Harriet Vane in Strong Poison (1930) caused a schism. Some readers felt the love interest distracted from the purity of the detective story form, pulling the books out of shape and making them too long and dull, while others simply didn't think she was worthy of their hero. Sayers was inundated with letters begging her not to let Lord Peter marry "that horrid girl".It isn't hard to see the relationship between the dashing Lord Peter and Sayers's alter ego, Harriet Vane, as an attempt to improve on the disappointments of Sayers's own romantic life. Harriet (and presumably Sayers) certainly seem to approve when, in Gaudy Night (1935), young Beatrice declares that she would rather have a motorbike than a husband.Sayers herself liked the dimension Peter and Harriet's relationship added to the traditional mystery story form. She had always been something of a purist, but with Gaudy Night she does just what Harriet does, and writes a book about real people and messy feelings, rather than a classic puzzle story. Sayers is no James Ellroy but she recognised that while, "some readers prefer their detective stories to be of this conventional kind ... I believe the future to be with those writers who can contrive to strike the note of sincerity and to persuade us that violence really hurts."
Influences

Sayers considered Wilkie Collins to be the father of the detective story, and drew on the work of Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Now read on

The other leading Golden Age writers were Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.
Adaptations

There have been two TV adaptations, one starring Ian Carmichael as Wimsey (1972-1976) and a later one (1986) featuring Edward Petherbridge, with Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane. The series were well received although the screen can make Lord Peter's period mannerisms jar in a way the page doesn't, and you have to get past the wooden BBC production of some of the earlier episodes.
Recommended biography

Dorothy L Sayers: Her life and Soul (1993) by her friend Barbara Reynolds, and James Brabazon's Dorothy L Sayers: The Life of a Courageous Woman (1981) are well respected.
Useful links and work online

Work online
· The Mind of the Maker: one of Sayers's religious essays

Background
· The Dorothy L Sayers Society
· Personal opinion and helpful summary of Sayers's life and work
· Dorothy L Sayers archive
· Discussion forum