Dorothy L. Sayers

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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.
126
She also wrote poetry and reviews.
Black-and-white photo of Dorothy L. Sayers. Seated and looking off-camera with a slight smile, she wears large circular earrings and a dark blazer.
Bronze statue of Dorothy L. Sayers in Witham, England.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Features Margery Allingham
The plot (on which MA consulted Dorothy Sayers when the war work of each happened to throw them together) features Nazi designs on the British currency.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Brilliantly forged bank notes are to be circulated throughout...
Reception Margery Allingham
Early critics of MA 's work saw her as a young revitaliser of the detective form, along with Nicholas Blake and Michael Innes. Later she was linked with the slightly older Dorothy Sayers and...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Elizabeth Braddon
His article, Sensation Novelists: Miss Braddon, which covered seven novels she had published since 1862, made a famous personal attack in asserting that her work evidenced familiarity with a very low type of female...
Education Vera Brittain
Sh formed a friendship there with Dorothy Sayers .
Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists. Rutgers University Press.
51
Textual Production Agatha Christie
Dorothy Sayers invited AC to contribute a segment to a BBC radio crime-serial entitled Behind the Screen.
Morgan, Janet. Agatha Christie: A Biography. Collins, http://Rutherford HSS.
195
Other Life Event Agatha Christie
Her car was found overturned at the side of a road near Guildford in Surrey shortly after she disappeared. Searchers, including Dorothy Sayers , looked for her in the surrounding fields and woods. She was...
Literary responses Agatha Christie
Some critics felt that the novel's twist was a rotten, unfair trick. The London News Chronicle reviewer observed that it was a tasteless and unforgiving let-down by a writer we had grown to admire.But...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Agatha Christie
Although AC was supposed to be writing propaganda, her opinions on her own chosen genre were too strong to be muzzled. Having begun with praise of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , John Dickson Carr ...
Textual Features Wilkie Collins
This book, in which the effects of British colonial rule in India reverberate within English provincial life, is counted amongst the first detective novels, and proved as popular as The Woman in White. In...
Textual Production Clemence Dane
CD , with eleven more members of the Detection Club (including Dorothy L. Sayers , Agatha Christie , G. K. Chesterton , Anthony Berkeley , Freeman Wills Crofts , G. D. H. and M. I. Cole
Publishing Clemence Dane
CD contributed to The Scoop, a collaborative, experimental radio mystery play organized by Dorothy L. Sayers .
Sayers, Dorothy L. et al. “The Scoop: Parts I-XII”. The Listener, Vol.
5
.
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...
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
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...
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

Timeline

By late 1931: Twelve certain members of the Detection Club...

Women writers item

By late 1931

Twelve certain members of the Detection Club (including Agatha Christie , Dorothy L. Sayers , G. K. Chesterton , Clemence Dane , G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole ) published a collaborative detectivenovel called...

30 July 1935: Penguin Books issued its first ten titles:...

Writing climate item

30 July 1935

Penguin Books issued its first ten titles: sixpenny paperbacks with a characteristic penguin logo.

9 December 2006-17 July 2007: The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted...

Writing climate item

9 December 2006-17 July 2007

The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of photographs of women writers, mostly novelists, from 1920 to 1960.

Texts

Sayers, Dorothy L. Begin Here: A War-Time Essay. Gollancz, 1940.
Sayers, Dorothy L. “Behind the Screen: Part III”. The Listener, Vol.
iv
, No. 77, pp. 28-30.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Busman’s Honeymoon. Gollancz, 1937.
Dante Alighieri,. Cantica I: Hell. Translator Sayers, Dorothy L., Penguin, 1949.
Dante Alighieri,. Cantica II: Purgatory. Translator Sayers, Dorothy L., Penguin, 1955.
Dante Alighieri,. Cantica III: Paradise. Translators Sayers, Dorothy L. and Barbara Reynolds, Penguin, 1962.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Catholic Tales and Christian Songs. B. H. Blackwell, 1918.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Further Papers on Dante. Methuen, 1957.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. Gollancz, 1935.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936.
Sayers, Dorothy L., editor. Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. Gollancz, 1928.
Sayers, Dorothy L., editor. Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. Second Series. Gollancz, 1931.
Sayers, Dorothy L., editor. Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. Third Series. Gollancz, 1934.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Hangman’s Holiday. Gollancz, 1933.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Have His Carcase. Gollancz, 1932.
Sayers, Dorothy L. He That Should Come. Victor Gollancz, 1939.
Sayers, Dorothy L. In the Teeth of the Evidence. Gollancz, 1939.
Sayers, Dorothy L., and Wilkie Collins. “Introduction”. The Moonstone, Dent; Dutton, 1967, p. v - xi.
Sayers, Dorothy L., and Barbara Reynolds. Introductory Papers on Dante. Methuen, 1954.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Murder Must Advertise. Gollancz, 1933.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Op. I. B. H. Blackwell, 1916.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Strong Poison. Gollancz, 1930.
Sayers, Dorothy L., editor. Tales of Detection. J. M. Dent and Sons, 1936.
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Devil to Pay. Gollancz, 1939.
Dante Alighieri,. The Divine Comedy. I: Hell. Translator Sayers, Dorothy L., Penguin Books, 1957.