Dorothy L. Sayers is best-known as a pre-second-world-war detective novelist, particularly as the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. But the financial success she enjoyed from these novels permitted her to turn to other genres and topics later in her career, including plays and radio dramas on religious themes, other Christian writings, and an important translation of
Dante.
She also wrote poetry and reviews.
Milestones
18 September 1930 DLS introduced Harriet Vane in
Strong Poison, her fifth Lord Peter Wimsey detective novel.
10 November 1949 DLS published the first of her three-part translation of
Dante's
Divine Comedy into English verse:
Cantica I: Hell.
7 May 1955 DLS published the second instalment of her verse translation (with her introduction) of
Dante's
Divine Comedy:
Cantica II: Purgatory.
17 December 1957 DLS died in her home at
Witham in
Essex, from an apparent stroke.
14 April 1962 The third section of DLS's translation of
Dante's
Divine Comedy—
Cantica III: Paradise—was published posthumously; Barbara Reynolds completed those parts that Sayers had not finished when she died.
