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[[File:DLSayers.jpg|frame|"Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds."]]
'''Dorothy L. Sayers''' (1893-1957) was an English writer, best known for her [[Mystery Fiction|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 [[
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.)
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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.<ref> Although her devastating affair with the novelist John Cournos was never actually consummated, she became sexually involved with a motorcyclist and mechanic named Bill White by whom she became pregnant. In order to spare the feelings of her family, as well as to retain her advertising job, she kept her condition secret, giving the boy to a cousin to raise; even her son himself did not realize that she was his biological mother until he was grown. Her subsequent marriage to "Mac" Fleming was troubled, but ultimately enduring.</ref> Many critics, those who knew her only by her Christian writings and her superficial physical appearance, assumed she was a pathetic, dried-up old [[Les Yay|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 [[All Women Are Prudes|sex was for and about men]].) This theory arose during Sayers's lifetime and became one of her [[Berserk Button|Berserk Buttons]] -- in fact, she went as far as to deny that Vane was an [[Author Avatar]] <ref>despite the fact that Sayers had adapted her relationship with Cournos into the Harriet Vane/Philip Boyes affair with some specificity</ref> -- 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 [[
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** ''The Divine Comedy, Part 1: Hell'' (1949) -- Translated from the ''[[Divine Comedy|Commedia]] (Inferno)'' of Dante Alighieri (Italian)
** ''The Divine Comedy, Part 2: Purgatory'' (1955) -- Translated from the ''[[Divine Comedy|Commedia]] (Purgatorio)'' of Dante Alighieri (Italian)
** ''The Song of Roland'' (1957) -- Translated from the ''[[The Song of Roland
** ''The Divine Comedy, Part 3: Paradise'' (1962) -- Translated from the ''[[Divine Comedy|Commedia]] (Paradiso)'' of Dante Alighieri (Italian) -- Incomplete; finished by Dr. Barbara Reynolds
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*** 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 [[
** [[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 [[Ancient Rome|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.
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* [[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
* [[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, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|diabolical.]] The main example she gives of a success is [[The Divine Comedy|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'').
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* [[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 [[The Renaissance|Renaissance]] [[Tome of Eldritch Lore|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.
* [[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 [[GK Chesterton|G.K. Chesterton's]] ''Orthodoxy'' -- a book which she credited for her re-dedication to Christianity when she was a teenager.▼
* [[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. [[Your Mileage May Vary|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 [[
* [[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.
* <s>[[Viewers are Morons|Viewers]]</s> [[Viewers are Morons|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''
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[[Category:Mystery Story Creator Index]]
[[Category:Authors]]
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