Dorothy Leigh Sayers

Dorothy Leigh Sayers , 1893-1957, English writer, grad. Somerville College, Oxford, 1915. Taking first-class honors in medieval literature, she was one of the first women to receive an Oxford degree. For a time she worked as a copywriter in a London advertising agency—the setting for her Murder Must Advertise (1933). Her first detective novel was Whose Body? (1923), which marked the debut of her nobleman-detective, Lord Peter Wimsey; he reappeared in 10 novels including The Nine Tailors (1934) and Gaudy Night (1935). Her short stories featuring Wimsey were collected in Lord Peter (1972). Sayers is considered one of the masters of the detective story. Her novels are brilliantly plotted and written with great vitality, wit, and erudition. She later wrote religious dramas and theological essays, including Begin Here (1941) and Creed or Chaos? (1949). She translated most of Dante's Divine Comedy (1949, 1955) and wrote studies of Dante (1954 and 1957).

Bibliography: See her letters, ed. by B. Reynolds (vol. 1, 1996; vol. 2, 1998); biographies by M. Brunsdale (1990) and B. Reynolds (1993).

Sayers, Dorothy Leigh (1893–1957), novelist, religious playwright, and apologist. The daughter of an Anglican clergyman, she wrote detective stories (the last published in 1937), two plays for the Canterbury Festival in 1937 and 1939, and a radio dramatization of the life of Christ, The Man Born to be King, broadcast in 1941–2. This caused controversy through its representation of Christ by an actor and because the dialogue in which he took part was in modern English. She combined professional competence with fresh insights into the meaning of the Christian faith. Her major work was an annotated verse translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.