Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Dorothy L. Sayers
-
Standard Name: Sayers, Dorothy L.
Birth Name: Dorothy Leigh Sayers
Pseudonym: H. P. Rallentando
DLS
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
.
Brabazon, James. Dorothy L. Sayers. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
The narrator, Laurie, is an alienated, sceptical, modern young woman, whose gender is, however, left largely inexplicit. She is recovering from the ending of a twelve-year adulterous relationship about which she still feels guilty, yearning...
A review of detective novels in The Times (subtitled Deadlier than the Male) invoked the proud position of women among writers of this genre, citing Dorothy L. Sayers
, Agatha Christie
, Margery Allingham
Literary responses
Flora Macdonald Mayor
Rediscovery of FMM
was fostered by Sybil Oldfield
, who in 1984 published an extensive account of Mayor's life and works (which she narrated in parallel with those of Mayor's contemporary Mary Sheepshanks
). During...
Textual Production
L. T. Meade
LTM
also wrote mysteries jointly with Robert Eustace (Eustace Robert Barton
), both in the form of magazine stories and of novels published with Ward, Lock and Co.
The latter include A Master of...
Textual Production
Jan Morris
More than a decade later, in 1978, JM
followed her own portrait of Oxford by editing The Oxford Book of Oxford, a quirky anthology of often very short anecdotes and other excerpts, aimed less...
Intertextuality and Influence
Kathleen Nott
Here KN
writes a lively style, with ingenious images and examples, paradoxes like giving a name a bad dog (by which she means taking a concept like Liberalism or Science and using it pejoratively),
Nott, Kathleen. The Emperor’s Clothes. Heinemann.
43
Literary responses
Kathleen Nott
This book was controversial. Philip Toynbee
called it a rare example of vigorous polemic, witty, hard-hitting and deeply serious.
The Times responded with a front-page article (anonymous, as all...
Friends, Associates
Ruth Pitter
RP
knew T. S. Eliot
well enough to enjoy a courtly encounter with him at a bus stop, but she felt his great innovations had not necessarily been a good thing for English poetry, and...
Education
Barbara Pym
BP
responded strongly to the intellectual and social opportunities available at university. In her diary (begun in in the year she went up to Oxford and continued for most of her life) she wrote: Oxford...
Reception
Laura Riding
Among many personal replies was one from Naomi Mitchison
, who visited Riding to argue that women are not innately inside but have been made so by being kept out of public activities, that politics...
Anthologization
Naomi Royde-Smith
Tales of Nightmare and the Borderland of the Mind, edited by Dorothy L. Sayers
in 1929, included NRS
's story Proof, which is available online on sites specialising in horror fiction, and is...
Cultural formation
Doreen Wallace
By the time DW
became a student at Oxford she was a convinced unbeliever, given to stubborn argument with the Christian Dorothy L. Sayers
.
Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists. Rutgers University Press.
57
She admired the historical fine man from Nazareth called...
Education
Doreen Wallace
At Somerville DW
became a close friend of Dorothy Sayers
(their religious and political disagreements later drove them apart) and in her circle met Vera Brittain
, Winifred Holtby
, and theSitwells
.
Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists. Rutgers University Press.
