The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers

📖 The Scoop

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.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures (fancy, right?)