Dorothy L. Sayers



Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) was an English writer, best known for her detective fiction, particularly the novels and stories featuring Amateur Sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. Her crime fiction also included many more short stories (of which eleven featured another amateur sleuth, the contrastingly lower-class Montague Egg) and the novel The Documents in the Case, co-written with Robert Eustace. After the death of her greatly admired G. K. Chesterton, she would herself become president of The Detection Club, an association of authors united to maintain the highest standards in the genre.

Before the detective fiction career took off, she worked as a copywriter at a London advertising agency, where she worked on a long-running series of ads for Guinness and created a sensationally successful viral marketing campaign for Colman's Mustard. (Some years later, she set one of her Lord Peter mysteries in an advertising agency.)

She was also a playwright, whose works frequently examined moral and theological questions. They include The Devil to Pay, a retelling of the Faust legend; and the 12-play cycle The Man Born to be King, a dramatization of the life of Jesus commissioned by BBC Radio. Sayers felt that religious drama was frequently undramatic, populated by flat characters who mouthed archaic dialogue while going through the overfamiliar motions, and strove to avoid this in her play cycle, presenting the characters as real people who speak in contemporary language and are motivated by everyday (and occasionally trivial) concerns. The approach was inevitably controversial, but widely regarded as a success.

In later life, Sayers began work on a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. She had completed Inferno and Purgatorio, and was working on Paradiso when she died; the work was completed by her colleague and later biographer, Dr. Barbara Reynolds, and published posthumously. (Dr. Reynolds has also edited four volumes of selected letters by Sayers.)

Sayers was also a Sherlock Holmes fan, and a noted player of the Great Game of Holmesian "scholarship". Her contributions include a famous argument for the proposition that Doctor Watson's middle name was "Hamish", and an essay that combined actual historical evidence with the few clues in the Canon to deduce not only where and when Holmes attended university, but where he stayed and which classes he took.

One of the strangest theories to arise from Sayers's work concerns the character Harriet Vane, the love interest of Lord Peter Wimsey. A popular literary theory of the time called the "personal fallacy" held that all fiction was Self-Insert Fic, and that any character bearing even a passing resemblance to the author must be a full God Mode Sue. Sayers was one of the strongest voices condemning this theory, most notably in the preface to her 1941 religious commentary The Mind of the Maker.

Stung by the vehemence of her rebuttal, literary critics attacked Sayers personally, claiming that Vane, an erudite Oxford-educated mystery writer, was a blatant Author Avatar created to allow Sayers to vicariously "marry" Lord Peter. This bizarre theory unfortunately gained credence due to a number of factors. Sayers was fiercely protective of her privacy, so much so that few knew of her (for the time) romantically adventurous personal life. Many critics, those who knew her only by her Christian writings and her superficial physical appearance, assumed she was a pathetic, dried-up old lesbian who had created Harriet so she could have a vicarious love affair without subjecting herself to tiresome sex. (Keep in mind that lesbianism was seen at the time not as active attraction to women but as rejection of sex, since naturally sex was for and about men.) This theory arose during Sayers's lifetime and became one of her Berserk Buttons -- in fact, she went as far as to deny that Vane was an Author Avatar -- and it gained momentum after her death. It's only since the recent publication of a frank biography and of her own letters that critics have realized just how far off the mark these ideas actually were.

She is a member of the group of female detective novelists known to readers as "The Big Four"; the other three are Ngaio Marsh (who gleefully spread the "dried-up old prune in love with her creation" rumours), Margery Allingham, and Agatha Christie. Most critics consider her the best writer of the four.

Her works include:


 * Mystery Fiction:
 * The Lord Peter Wimsey series
 * The Montague Egg series
 * The Documents in the Case (with Robert Eustace) (1930) -- An epistolatory novel.
 * The Floating Admiral (with other members of The Detection Club) (1931) -- Sayers wrote one chapter.
 * Hangman's Holiday (1933) -- Short stories, including four Lord Peter Wimsey stories, six Montague Egg stories, and two independent stories.
 * Ask a Policeman (with other members of The Detection Club) (1933) -- Sayers wrote one chapter.
 * Six against the Yard (with other members of The Detection Club) (1936) -- Includes the short story "Blood Sacrifice", also included in In the Teeth of the Evidence (see below).
 * Double Death (with other members of The Detection Club) (1939) -- Sayers wrote one chapter.
 * In the Teeth of the Evidence (1939) -- Short stories, including two Lord Peter Wimsey stories, five Montague Egg stories, and ten independent stories.


 * Plays:


 * The Zeal of Thy House (1937) -- A pageant-play telling the story of William of Sens, architect of Canterbury cathedral
 * He That Should Come (1938) -- A radio-play telling the story of the Nativity
 * The Devil To Pay (1939) -- A pageant-play retelling the story of Faust
 * Love All (1940) -- A comedy
 * The Man Born To Be King (1941) -- A series of 12 radio-plays recounting the life of Christ
 * The Just Vengeance (1946) -- A pageant-play using the death of an Airman to examine the theological dogma of the Atonement
 * The Emperor Constantine (1951) -- A pageant-play recounting the life of the first Christian Roman emperor and his involvement with the Council of Nicaea


 * Translations:


 * Tristan in Brittany (1929) -- Translated from the Tristan of Thomas the Anglo-Norman (Old French)
 * The Heart of Stone (1946) -- Translated Odes from the Convivio of Dante Alighieri (Italian)
 * The Divine Comedy, Part 1: Hell (1949) -- Translated from the Commedia (Inferno) of Dante Alighieri (Italian)
 * The Divine Comedy, Part 2: Purgatory (1955) -- Translated from the Commedia (Purgatorio) of Dante Alighieri (Italian)
 * The Song of Roland (1957) -- Translated from the Chanson de Roland of Turoldus(?) (Old French)
 * The Divine Comedy, Part 3: Paradise (1962) -- Translated from the Commedia (Paradiso) of Dante Alighieri (Italian) -- Incomplete; finished by Dr. Barbara Reynolds


 * Critical, Sociological, and Theological Works:


 * Begin Here (1940) -- An essay on war-goals and peace-goals
 * The Mind of the Maker (1941) -- An application of Trinitarian theology to the three-fold mind of the human creator
 * Unpopular Opinions (1946) -- Essays, including "The Mysterious English," "Are Women Human?," and "Dr. Watson's Middle Name"
 * Creed or Chaos? And Other Essays in Popular Theology (1947) -- Essays, including "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged," "Why Work?," and "The Other Six Deadly Sins"
 * Introductory Papers on Dante (1954) -- Essays, including "The Meaning of Heaven and Hell," "The Meaning of Purgatory," and "Dante's Cosmos"
 * Further Papers on Dante (1957) -- Essays, including "And Telling You A Story," "The Divine Poet and the Angelic Doctor" and "Dante and Milton"
 * The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement (1963) -- Essays, including "The Lost Tools of Learning," "The Faust Legend and the Idea of the Devil," and "Oedipus Simplex"

Works by Dorothy L. Sayers with their own trope pages include:

 * Lord Peter Wimsey series
 * Montague Egg series

Other works by Dorothy L. Sayers provide examples of the following tropes:

 * Author Existence Failure: Prevented her completion of her translation of the Paradiso.
 * Berserk Button: Sayers had more buttons than an elevator in the Empire State Building. For example:
 * Leaving the L out of Sayers' name. (It stood for "Leigh", her mother's maiden name, by the way.)
 * This may be because Dorothy Sayer was a popular 1920s London burlesque queen. With Sayers, though, you can never tell.
 * According to Sayers' letters, it was indeed because she was confused with the other lady, whose press-clippings were occasionally erroneously sent to her, and also because she thought leaving the "L" out induced people to pronounce her name as an "ugly spondee", "Say-Ers," instead of her preferred monosyllabic "Sairs."
 * Suggesting that she alter her work for some non-artistic reason, such as "audience acceptability" or "to inspire Christian feelings." Even her friend CS Lewis got it in the neck for this one.
 * Executive Meddling, such as nearly happened in the case of her radio-play, The Man Born To Be King. When the BBC Children's Hour insisted on its right to control its content, she sent them a letter, stuffed with the tiny torn-up pieces of her contract.
 * Gina Dalfonzo's recent dual biography Dorothy and Jack goes into the above two. They wrote a number of letters to each other about that and had something of a Friendly Rivalry that affected both their essays. They were good foils because Dorothy was something of a reluctant apologist herself and had to be convinced to make a stab at that genre.
 * Nearly at the end of her life, she was outraged by the novelist Robert Graves's sneering translation of the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus -- some two thousand years after Lucan's death.
 * She was also scornful of the idea that Harriet Vane (or Lord Peter, for that matter) was an Author Avatar, for reasons mentioned above.
 * Though she admitted she got a certain amount of vicarious pleasure in describing Lord Peter's luxurious lifestyle while she was still in the starving artist stage of her career as a novelist.
 * Corrupt Church: The Priest in The Devil to Pay; Caiaphas in The Man Born To Be King and The Just Vengeance
 * Council of Angels: In her play, The Zeal of Thy House
 * Cultural Translation: In her translation of the Divine Comedy
 * Deadpan Snarker: Many, but the Empress Helena in her play The Emperor Constantine is a stand-out example.
 * Deal with the Devil: In The Devil to Pay, obviously
 * Doctor's Orders: In The Man Born To Be King, Herod's doctor speaks quite firmly with him.
 * Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The Faust Legend and the Idea of the Devil is about how hard it is to write a literary devil that is really well, diabolical. The main example she gives of a success is Dante.
 * Forgiveness: The Emperor Constantine
 * God: Owing to the anti-blasphemy laws that formerly obtained in the United Kingdom, it was illegal to bring God as a character onto the stage; Sayers got around this by presenting Him either in radio-drama (as in The Man Born To Be King) or under another name (e.g., as "The Judge" in The Devil to Pay or as the "Persona Dei" in The Just Vengeance).
 * Gone Horribly Right: The sulphate of thanatol in The Man who Knew How.
 * Historical Domain Character: William of Sens in The Zeal of Thy House; Herod the Great and others in The Man Born to be King; George Fox and Dr. Samuel Johnson in The Just Vengeance; the Emperor Constantine and others in his eponymous play. (The Pope and Emperor in The Devil to Pay are carefully unnamed; research had shown Sayers that the contemporary pope was one of the Borgias!)
 * Hypocrite: Among several, Bassiana Marcia in The Emperor Constantine
 * I Did What I Had to Do: Caiaphas's justification for having Jesus executed in The Man Born To Be King.
 * Mr. Smith: Sayers planned out a series of stories (of which only one, "The Leopard Lady," was ultimately published) in which an organization called "Smith & Smith Removals" (featuring Mr. Smith, Mr. Smythe, Mr. Schmidt, and so on) contracts to murder for profit.
 * My Hair Came Out Green: In "The Inspiration of Mr Budd".
 * Offing the Offspring: Happens to Crispus in The Emperor Constantine
 * Platonic Life Partners: With C. S. Lewis. Doubled as Friendly Rival at times over differing subjects.
 * Ritual Magic: In The Devil To Pay, Sayers' take on the Faust legend, Mephistopheles is conjured by rituals that Sayers found in actual Renaissance grimoires. Moreover, she contrasts the simplicity of Jesus's miracles with the complicated spells of sorcerers in The Man Born to Be King.
 * Satire: She can be hilarious at times. One of the better ones was a satire on Higher Criticism. It is A Vote of Thanks to Cyrus which begins with her surprise that Cyrus the Great was also in The Bible, and goes on to imagine what the Gospels would look like if they were a series of obituaries for a well-regarded clergyman in England.
 * The Seven Deadly Sins: The Other Six Deadly Sins. This starts by pointing out that Lust is overemphasized and than goes on to skewer examples of the other sins. Perhaps slightly marred by repeating of the occupational prejudices of Chesterton, whom she held in high regard.
 * Shout-Out: Not uncommon with Sayers; for instance, a passage describing Peter and John in The Zeal of Thy House was deliberately modeled on a passage in G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy -- a book which she credited for her re-dedication to Christianity when she was a teenager.
 * Smug Snake: Shadrach, in The Man Born To Be King.
 * Unreliable Narrator: Some of the letters in The Documents in the Case are written by them.
 * Viewers Listeners Are Morons: The BBC Children's Hour wanted her to make The Man Born To Be King more accessible to their listeners, so its producers asked her to dumb down the script. She refused. Violently.
 * What Could Have Been: Dorothy and Lewis were once at Oxford together and likely overlapped in their daily habits enough times that they could have easily met face to face. In fact it is likely they did meet briefly but their first relationship was by letter.
 * Wicked Stepmother: Fausta in The Emperor Constantine