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.
MJ
, as H. Hunter, had a letter printed in The New Witness which challenged theological objections by Catholic poet Theodore Maynard
to Catholic Tales by her friend Dorothy Sayers
.
Reynolds, Barbara. “"‘Dear Jim ’ The Reconstruction of A Friendship”. Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, Vol.
17
, Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, pp. 47-59.
51, n10
Education
Muriel Jaeger
The BA course lasted for three years, but MJ
stayed on for a fourth year, probably because of interruptions from ill health. At Somerville she formed friendships with Charis Barnett, later Frankenburg
(whose autobiography, Not...
Friends, Associates
Muriel Jaeger
MJ
was a contemporary and close friend of Dorothy L. Sayers
, who dedicated several works to her. They include a poem about the way their shared Oxford experience was vanishing into the past (Jaeger...
Textual Production
Muriel Jaeger
As a member of Somerville
's Mutual Admiration Society MJ
must already have been writing, since the group existed for the purpose of mutual literary encouragement. She collaborated with Dorothy Sayers
in writing, and performing...
Textual Production
Muriel Jaeger
Many letters from Dorothy Sayers
to MJ
survive at the Marion E. Wade Center
, Wheaton College
, in Illinois, USA. Sayers apparently did not keep her letters from Jaeger, since none are extant.
Reynolds, Barbara. “"‘Dear Jim ’ The Reconstruction of A Friendship”. Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, Vol.
17
, Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, pp. 47-59.
58
Textual Features
Georgette Heyer
Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway make their first appearances here. They become series characters in Heyer's next four detective novels: Behold, Here's Poison! (1936), They Found Him Dead (1937), A Blunt Instrument (1938), and No...
Literary responses
Georgette Heyer
Laski
argued that the taste for popular fiction stemmed from the fact that the serious modern novel had decided to deny itself the amenity of the shapely story satisfactorily resolved, so that compulsive novel readers...
This book reflects MF
's wide reading and an impish sense of humour employed to help her and her readers live with the unacceptable. Each chapter comes headed by a very funny cartoon and a...
Textual Production
Antonia Fraser
In Oxford Blood, AF
dared comparison with Gaudy Night, one of Dorothy L. Sayers
's most popular detective novels, by bringing her graduate heroine back into the university world which was a formative influence on her.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
276
Textual Features
Antonia Fraser
In her detective-story guise, Fraser sees herself as part of a women's tradition in the genre, and names as influences a number of writers who are known for interest in human psychology and a high...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emmuska, Baroness Orczy
EBO
claimed that English readers (men for the most part) had told her that she had created a perfect representation of an English gentleman.
Emmuska, Baroness Orczy,. Links in the Chain of Life. Hutchinson.
7
Arnold Bennett
, discoursing on the greater importance...
Intertextuality and Influence
E. M. Delafield
The genre of the Diary was widely imitated by writers in the 1930s. One critic has detected its influence in the details of rural household problems which intrude upon both love and detection in Dorothy L. Sayers
Occupation
Dante Alighieri
Dante's known poetry begins with La vita nuova (The New Life in English), a work in both verse and prose about his famous love for the married Beatrice, which was probably finished by 1293...
