Dorothy Sayers

DOROTHY SAYERS

Date of Birth: July 13, 1983
Date of Death: December 17, 1957
Birthplace: Oxford, England
Education: Somerville College, Oxford, B.A. (honors) 1912-15; B.A., 1915; M.A., 1920.
Profession: Copywriter for Benson's advertising agency, London, 1921-31; Founder of The Mustard Club, 1926 ("It is a Political Club, because members find that liberal use of Mustard saves labor in digestion and is conservative of health"); founder of The Detection Club, 1928; President, 1949-57; President Modern Language Association, 1939-45; Editor, Methuen, London, 1941-46.
Influences, Interests and Interesting Tidbits: "You were right in supposing that it is a husband that I really want, because I become impatient of the beastly restrictions which 'free love' imposes. I have a careless rage for life, and secrecy tends to make me bad-tempered...Give me a man that's human and careless and loves life, and one that can enjoy the rough and tumble of passion."
-Dorothy L. Sayers, letter to John Cournos, January 1925"

One thing at least is very remarkable: that Christ, alone of all religious teachers, made no difference between woman & men, laid down no separate rules for female behavior, was equally unselfconscious with both sexes, gave just the same serious attention to the questions & opinions of woman as of men, never used female faults & failings to point any particular moral, and indeed, made sex no part whatever of his teaching, except to say, when challenged, that men were as much to blame as women for sexual sins, & that dirty thinking was just as bad as dirty living."
-Letter to Miss Amy Davies, November 26, 1941

The detective story seeks to leave nothing unexplained.
-Dorothy L. Sayers, The Centenary Celebration

I do not, as a matter of fact, remember inventing Lord Peter [Wimsey] at all. My impression is that I was thinking of writing a detective story, and that he walked in, complete with spats, and applied in an air don't-care-if-I-get-it way for the job for hero.
-Dorothy L. Sayers, "How I Came to Invent the Character of Lord Peter," Harcourt Brace News, July 15, 1936

The first time I met Dorothy was at the annual banquet at the Café Royal....I came away from this first encounter with [the] distinct impression...that it was very dangerous, so far as Dorothy was concerned, to make fun of the crime novel...Dorothy was capable, on occasion, of being coarse. Her language was sometimes Rabelaisian...Dorothy was not ashamed of it. Did she not, at a later period, make a speech called ' The Important of Being Vulgar'?
-Michel Gilbert, 'A Personal Memoir' contained in Dorothy L. Sayers: The Centenary Celebration