ENGLISH 383: Women Mystery Writers

Brief Biography of Dorothy Sayers

1893 - born at Oxford, the only child of the Rev. Henry Sayers who was at the time headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School, and she was born in the headmaster's house
1897 - her family moved to a country Parish, Bluntisham Rectory, Cambridgeshire, and went to the Godolphin School, Salisbury, where she won a scholarship to Somerville College
1915 - completed her course work and sat final exams at Oxford but, though having earned a first class degree in English Literature (Part 1 - Medieval Literature), she was not awarded the degree since women were not allowed to hold Oxford degrees.
After leaving Oxford, she tried a series of different jobs: Blackwell's Publishing firm in Oxford, working at a school in Normandy France, and from 1922 until 1931 served as copywriter at the London advertising firm of Bensons.
1920 - October 14th Sayers was one of the first women officially awarded her Oxford degree
1923 her first novel was published: Whose Body, which introduced Lord Peter Wimsey, her hero for fourteen volumes of novels and short stories.
1926 - she married Arthur Fleming
1928 - her father died at Christchurch in the Fens, his last parish, and she bought a cottage at Witham, Essex, to accommodate her mother.
1929 - her mother died, and Sayers moved in herself and bought the house next door, No 22 Newland Street, to throw the two houses into one. There she worked until her death in 1957.
1930 - Sayers introduces Harriet Vane in Strong Poison, creating a strong female character many have read as an alter ego for Sayers
1933 - Sayers creates her third memorable detective - Montague Egg who appeared in 11 short stories from 1933-1939; these are very much in the classic detective fiction mold, emphasizing intellectual puzzle plots
1935 - Gaudy Night published - Sayers intended it to be the last of her Wimsey novels
1936 - at the urging of her friend Muriel St. Clare Byrne, who collaborated with her, she staged a Lord Peter story The Busman's Honeymoon; its success encouraged her to pursue further playwrighting and she virtually gave up crime writing which had made her financially secure.
In the period between 1936 - 1959, she wrote six plays, the most important of which was The Man Born to be King a life of Christ written for BBC's Children's Hour radio program. Her presentation of Christ's voice speaking in modern English raised a storm of protest and revolutionized religious play-writing.
During World War II, she concentrated her writing on religious themes - writing Begin Here, followed by The Mind of the Maker
She also began work on what she thought of her real life's work, a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy into English and she also translated the Song of Roland from the old French
1957 - when she died, she left a number of projects unfinished - including the third volume of Dante - Paradiso - and a new Wimsey novel - Thrones and Dominations (completed in 1998 by Jill Paton Walsh)