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
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
E. M. Delafield writes that during the 1940s CY retained wide popularity: that the London Library 's copies of her books were often checked out by readers, and that when Delafield wrote to the Times...
Textual Features Dorothy Whipple
DW also presents, with deliberate naivete, the ups and downs of her own career: her high points and failures of confidence. As her confidence grows, her narrative embraces funny anecdotes, moving moments, penetrating insights, and...
Literary responses Patricia Wentworth
The dustjacket of this novel bears a list of encomiums on Miss Silver: [t]hat shrewd lady of lavender and Honiton lace (The Star), lovable, indefatigable and undeceivable (Books and Bookmen), [n]ow...
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
MW has specialized in adapting and abridging novels for radio. Between 1980 and 2004 she adapted a wide array of fiction by women writers, including works by Jane Austen , Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot
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.
57
Friends, Associates Doreen Wallace
DW 's close friendships with Winifred Holtby and Leon Geach lasted until their untimely deaths. But that with Dorothy Sayers ended in estrangement on religious and political grounds: the final straw was apparently DW 's...
Friends, Associates Doreen Wallace
DW later cherished epistolary friendships with other writers like Giles Dixey and Roy Winstanley . She formed a close bond with another, Janet Hitchman , when, after reading her autobiography and sympathising with her struggles...
Material Conditions of Writing Doreen Wallace
Eileen Wallace (later Doreen) began writing poetry as a child, generally to console herself for unhappiness.
Shepherd, June. Doreen Wallace, 1897-1989: Writer and Social Campaigner. Edwin Mellen Press.
11
At Oxford she formed, with Leon Geach and Dorothy Sayers , the Rhyme Club , whose pastime was...
Publishing Doreen Wallace
She began writing this book during her first pregnancy, by which time she felt she had enough experience of life, though limited, and knowledge of country people, though limited, to have something more to say...
Textual Production Doreen Wallace
DW campaigned against the system of tithe payments during the 1930s in many newspaper and magazine articles and in speeches at public occasions. Her long-time reviewing of books for The Times came to an end...
Fictionalization Doreen Wallace
She presented a copy of each of her books to her husband , inscribed: R. H. Rash, with love from the author.
Shepherd, June. Doreen Wallace, 1897-1989: Writer and Social Campaigner. Edwin Mellen Press.
99
But he and most of her family never read her books, though...
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...
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...
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...

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.