Dorothy L Sayers Books

Author Dorothy Sayers was born on June 13 1893 in Oxford, United Kingdom, the only child her parents had. Her father was a reverend and chaplain of Christ Church and headmaster of the Choir School. It was he who taught her Latin while she was only six. The small village of Bluntisham-cum Earith was where she grew up when her father was living there as the rector. The names in the church graveyard where used by Sayers in a novel she wrote called “The Nine Tailors”. She had a son with a man named Bill White, and the child was raised by her aunt and cousin. They passed the child off as Sayers’s nephew. After she had released two of her detective novels, she marred a Scottish journalist named Captain Oswald Atherton Fleming (he used the professional name Artherton Fleming and was also referred to as Mac) on April 6, 1926. They lived in Bloomsbury in house that she would live in until she died. They worked, Fleming worked as an author and a journalist, and she worked as a copywriter in advertising and worked as an author. The job that she had the longest (besides being a writer) was from 1922 until 1931 where she worked as a copywriter at S. H. Benson’s advertising agency. Sayers was quite successful while working this job. Variations of her ads still appear today. She died of a coronary thrombosis on December 17, 1957 in Witham, Essex at the age of 64. She left her son (who did not know she was his mother) everything when she died. She was preceded by her husband who died in 1950.

Dorothy Sayers wrote poetry, essays, plays, and even did some translations. She is most known for the series of mysteries that she wrote between the First and Second World Wars that star amateur sleuth and aristocrat named Lord Peter Wimsey. In these stories, she does not write pure mysteries but looks at the problems that veterans of World War One had, supporting women’s education, and role in society. She claimed that her translation of the Divine Comedy by Dante to be her best work.

DOROTHY SAYERS BOOKS INTO MOVIES/TV

Some of her work has been adapted into movies. These include “Clouds of Witness”, “Murder Must Advertise”, “The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club”, “The Nine Tailors”, and Five Red Herrings. All of these starred Ian Carmichael. The ones that starred Edward Petherbridge are “Strong Poison”, “Have His Carcase”, and “Gaudy Night”.

BEST DOROTHY SAYERS BOOKS

For those readers looking to get into novels by Dorothy Sayers, this section will help with that. It will go over the novels “Whose Body?”, “Clouds of Witness”, and “Unnatural Death”.

Whose Body?: This is the first novel in the “Lord Peter Wimsey” series and was released in the year 1923. A naked body is found in a bath tub, which is not unusual for a bath. It is unusual for a murder though. Especially since the body had gold pince-nez set on the sightless eyes. After death, it would seem the face was shaved. It is assumed by the police that the victim was a well to do financier, but Lord Peter Wimsey knows better. And he dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby. He will untangle the mystery of the corpse in the bath.

Clouds of Witness: This is the second novel in the “Lord Peter Wimsey” series and was released in the year 1926. The Wimsey family retreat (Riddlesdale Lodge) is a rustic place that is full of the atmosphere of the thrill of the hunt and country pleasures. That is, until one day the game that turned up was human and dead. The man lie near the chrysanthemums, had on a dinner jacket and slippers. He was soon to be Lord Peter’s brother in law. Wimsey’s own brother is accused of murder. If that is not enough to boggle the mind of Wimsey, perhaps a vanishing midnight letter that came from Egypt, a bullet meant for one specific Wimsey, and a fiance full of grief and suitcase in hand will be.

Unnatural Death: This is the third novel in the “Lord Peter Wimsey” series and was released in the year 1927. The wealthy old woman is dead. That is the good news, the bad being that she died before she was expected to. The trail leads from a lovely village in Hampshire, a nice London flat, and a careful test of a secret affair that was staged by Wimsey.

June 4, 2017

Home » Author » Dorothy L Sayers

BookSeries.org