Dorothy L. Sayers

13 June 1893 (Oxford)- 17 December 1957 (Witham, Essex). Well known as an English crime writer. In her novels, Lord Peter Wimsey is the protagonist.

Life

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born in Oxford on 13 June 1893 to Reverend Henry and Helen Mary Leigh Sayers. She was an only child and thus encouraged in her education and writing by her parents. First, she was educated by governesses, then, in January 1909, she became a boarding student at Godolphin in Salisbury. From 1912 to 1915, Sayers attended Somerville College in Oxford, where she graduated with first-class honours in 1915. After completing her studies in Oxford, Sayers worked in different jobs before the writing and publishing of her novels could support her, for example as a teacher, a publisher’s assistant and in advertising. In 1924, Sayers secretly gave birth to an illegitimate son, whom she named John Anthony. There is no record of his father in the birth certificate. She also had hid the pregnancy from her parents and employers, and her son was raised by a cousin, who ran a foster home just outside of Oxford. Two years later, in 1926, Sayers married Oswald A. “Mac” Fleming, a journalist and artist, who had served in the First World War. He adopted her son, but John Anthony never came to live with them. Sayers remained married to “Mac” Fleming until his death in 1950. The marriage produced no children. Dorothy L. Sayers died of a stroke on 17 December 1957.

Work

Starting in the 1920s into the 1930s, Sayers wrote several detective stories with Lord Peter Wimsey as protagonist. He is an example for a man who served during the First World War and who is now shell-shocked. It is one feature of his character that he sometimes switches back to what happened to his comrades during the war. Sayers’ first novel with him Whose Body? was published in 1923. Her detective novels are part of the classic age of detective fiction, but she also opened up the field to feminist concerns, which can be seen in strong female characters. But her works do not include only detective novels, but she also wrote poems and plays. She already published some of her poems when she worked as a publisher’s assistant. Sayers also wrote a cycle of plays on the life of Christ for younger audiences, which were very popular. These plays, for example The Man Born To Be King (1943), were broadcasted by the BBC. Furthermore, she translated the first two canticles of Dante’s Divine Comedy. She left the translation of the third canticle unfinished, as she did leave a new Wimsey novel Thrones, Dominations, when she died.

Sources:

Reitz, Caroline. Dorothy L. Sayers. The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. 5 vol. Ed. Kastan, David Scott et.al. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006. 4: 444-447.

Hone, Ralph E. Dorothy L. Sayers, A Literary Biography. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press 1979.