Dorothy L. Sayers
Personal Information
Description
Dorothy Leigh Sayers ( SAIRZ; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. Born in Oxford, Sayers was brought up in rural East Anglia and educated at Godolphin School in Salisbury and Somerville College, Oxford, graduating with first class honours in medieval French. She worked as an advertising copywriter between 1922 and 1929 before success as an author brought her financial independence. Her first novel, Whose Body?, was published in 1923. Between then and 1939 she wrote ten more novels featuring the upper-class amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.
Books
Letters to a diminished church
"In her writings, Dorothy L. Sayers turned the popular perception of Christianity on its head. She argues that the essence of Christianity is in the character of Christ - energetic, dramatic, and utterly alive. This collection of sixteen brilliant essays reveals Sayers at her best - a robust view of Christianity as startling and relevant today as it was fifty years ago."--BOOK JACKET.
Busman's honeymoon
Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry and go to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Hertfordshire which he has bought her as a present. The honeymoon is intended as a break from their usual routine of solving crimes (him) and writing about them (her), but it turns into a murder investigation when the seller of the house is found dead at the bottom of the cellar steps with severe head injuries. - Wikipedia.
The Five Red Herrings
Lord Peter Wimsey is trying to find the murderer of a local artists, but he finds that there are six main suspects, five who are being set up, and one who has created the perfect murder.
The documents in the case
The grotesquely grinning corpse in the Devonshire shack was a man who died horribly -- with a dish of mushrooms at his side. His body contained enough death-dealing muscarine to kill 30 people. Why would an expert on fungi feast on a large quantity of this particularly poisonous species. A clue to the brilliant murderer, who had baffled the best minds in London, was hidden in a series of letters and documents that no one seemed to care about, except the dead man's son.
The letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1899-1936
C.S. Lewis said that Dorothy L. Sayers would be acclaimed as one of the great letter-writers of the twentieth century. His opinion is triumphantly confirmed in this collection of letters spanning Sayers's childhood and career as a detective novelist. Her letters to family, friends, and professional colleagues paint a vivid portrait of a serious, determined, and often very funny writer - not just the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey and the greatest detective novelist of the. Golden age, but also a poet, a translator, and ultimately a playwright. There are also letters that make for painful reading: those to the man she loved, John Cournos, who refused to marry her because he didn't believe in marriage and didn't want children, yet soon after his move to America, married a woman with children of her own; and those pouring out her frustrated love to the illegitimate son whom she could not acknowledge publicly. Sayers reveals herself candidly. In her personal letters as a genial, amusing, and loyal friend, but also as the woman who "regarded the intellect as androgynous - neither male or female, but human" and took exuberant pleasure in using it well. Her letters bear the imprint of her vigorous mind, reflecting the social, cultural, and religious issues in which she took a passionate interest.
Striding Folly
Three short stories: Striding Folly, The Haunted Policeman, and Talboys
The unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
On Armistice day, an elderly gentleman is found dead in his chair at his club. The death seems natural enough, but a tricky question of inheritance leads Lord Peter to try to pin the time down more exactly. And the more questions he asks, the more unpleasant things start to seem.
Great Tales of Detection
This classic collection brings together nineteen of the greatest detective tales ever written, spanning between them a period of a hundred years. They range from Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Purloined Letter', one of the earliest examples of the genre, through Agatha Christie's 'perfect murder' in 'Philomel Cottage' to the cunningly constructed 'The Mystery of The Sleeping-Car Express' by Freeman Wills Crofts. The authors included are: H.C. Bailey E. C. Bentley Anthony Berkeley Ernest Bramah Thomas Burke G. K. Chesterton Agatha Christie Wilkie Collins Freeman Wills Croft R. Austin Freeman Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace Milward Kennedy C. Daly King John Rhode Father Ronald Knox Edgar Allan Poe Dorothy L. Sayers Robert Louis Stevenson Henry Wade
Clouds of Witness
The fiancé of Lord Peter's sister, Mary, is found dead outside the conservatory of the Wimsey family's shooting lodge in Yorkshire. The evidence points to their older brother, Gerald, the Duke of Denver, who is charged with the murder and put on trial in the House of Lords. To clear the family name, Lord Peter and his close friend Inspector Charles Parker scour the lodge's grounds, finding several tantalizing clues, including mysterious footprints, a piece of jewelry, and a cat charm. What do these leads mean, and why are Mary and Gerald suddenly acting so mysterious? Unraveling a string of coincidences, Lord Peter is determined to solve this intriguing case. But will the answer save his brother . . . or condemn him?
Crime Classics
With its high stakes and uncertain outcome, the mystery tale is the most popular form of fiction in the United States. Crime Classics presents spellbinding works by such masters as Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie, as well as delightful gems from less familiar writers like Cornell Woolrich and intriguing tales by authors not usually associated with mystery writing- Flannery O'Connor, Jorge Louis Borges, and William Faulkner. Burns and Sullivan introduce the anthology by tracing the history of the genre and providing a biography of each author. Mystery stories demand superb craftsmanship and attention to detail; these enticing pieces combine fine writing, inventive plots, and challenges that readers will find irresistible. Contents: The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) by Edgar Allan Poe [Purloined Letter]( (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe [A Scandal in Bohemia]( (1891) by Arthur Conan Doyle [The Adventure of the Speckled Band]( (1892) by Arthur Conan Doyle The Problem of Cell 13 (1905) by Jacques Futrelle The Invisible Man (1911) by G.K. Chesterton A Jury of Her Peers (1917) by Susan Glaspell The House in Turk Street (1924) by Dashiell Hammett The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba (1928) by Dorothy L. Sayers The Blue Geranium (1929) by Agatha Christie Murder at the Automat (1937) by Cornell Woolrich Hand Upon the Waters (1939) by William Faulkner Death and the Compass (1945) by Jorge Luís Borges; trans. by Anthony Kerrigan The Adventure of Abraham Lincoln’s Clue (1965) by Ellery Queen The Comforts of Home (1960) by Flannery O’Connor The Sleeping Dog (1965) by Ross Macdonald Sadie When She Died (1973) by Ed McBain
Strong Poison
This is the first in the Lord Peter Wimsey series of stories that includes Harriet Vane. Harriet is introduced as she stands in the dock on trial for murder. Lord Peter immediately determines that she is innocent and sets out to prove it - falling in love with her in the process.
Whose Body?
The first of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, in which the suave and witty gentleman foregoes a rare-book auction to investigate the presence of a bespectacled nude body in an architect's bathtub near the Wimsey's Denver estate