Dorothy Sayers: Her Life and Soul.

King, Daniel Patrick

"A novelist is a tradesman who supplies books to the public. Writing books is not a hobby; it is a job, a trade like any other." Dorothy L. Sayers is remembered because she tells a good and enduring mystery story. She lived and wrote during the great era of British detective fiction, and her novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey have been in publication continuously. But she was more than a mystery writer: she was also a Christian apologist who spent the last fourteen years of her life caught up with Dante, whom she translated.

Sayers was born one hundred years ago in Oxford, the only child of the headmaster of the Christ Church Choir School. At age six, her father decided that she was old enough to learn Latin, and she was conjugating Latin verbs six months later. She was one of the first women to receive a degree from Oxford. After a comfortable Edwardian childhood and her years at Oxford, she worked in London as an advertising copywriter and began her Wimsey novels. She survived unhappy relationships, failed affairs, and the birth of her illegitimate son. Her marriage was not the happiest.

Lord Peter, Sayers wrote, was "the true successor of Roland and Lancelot." He had started life as the Duke of Peterborough in an unpublished short story sketched out in France in 1920. It seems that the story was intended as a contribution to the series of Sexten Blake stories which were written by a syndicate, In a 1936 article Dorothy explained how she developed her character: she did not remember inventing him; she was thinking of writing a detective story, and he walked in "complete with spats" and applied for the job. Lord Peter, Dorothy admitted, became more to her than many living persons. He shared an immortality with Sherlock Holmes as he developed through the novels. He became an intensely interesting person, with his sensitivity, flippant nonchalance, and logical mind.

As Dorothy grew and developed, Lord Peter became more congenial to her thoughts. She used her experiences liberally in the stories: in "The Learned Adventures of the Dragon's Head" she admits that while the story is dull, "Pearson's doesn't like anything really grisly. The old book is a real one. I picked it up for five shillings myself, exactly as described." In The Nine Tailors her father (who had died six years previously) formed the basis of the lovable character, the Reverend Theodore Venables, rector of Fenchurch St. Paul. Denying that Gaudy Night was autobiographical, she stated categorically at the beginning of the book: "None of the characters I have placed upon this public stage has any counterpart in real life." Nevertheless, Harriet Vane's life parallels Dorothy's: her experience as a detective-story writer, her personality, her thoughts and feelings, her way of speaking, and her appearance are all strikingly similar.

By 1943, Dorothy had embarked on writing theological works, tiring of the detective genre. Despite pressures from fans and publishers, she was through with the work that had brought her fame: "As for writing detective stories - there are a thousand and one reasons why I can feel no desire for it; but the chief one is that, like Conan Doyle, I have been so much put off by being badgered to do it when I was wrapped up in other things that the mere thought now gives me a kind of nausea. When I started on my plays in 1937, I fully intended do another novel some day - though novels are terribly slow and tedious after the briskness of stage work. But the infernal nuisance of writing letters to sentimental Wimsey-addicts, telling editors that I cannot switch my mind off any job to write crime-stories for them, and I dare not start it up again, even if I wanted to ...! A new mystery story now would probably run me into super-tax - so brilliant is this government in devising discouragement for the dollar-earners."

But Dorothy revealed herself as a biblical scholar and critic of great insight. Her thinking on modern developments in theology is aptly summed up in her statement: "The history and theology of Christ are one thing: His life is theology in action, and the drama of His life is dogma shown as dramatic action." She dwelt on the consciousness of guilt: "Of all the presuppositions of Christianity, the only one I really have and can swear to from personal inward conviction is sin. About that I have no doubt whatever and never have had. Neither does any doctrine of determinism or psychological maladjustment convince me in the very least that when I do wrong it is not I who do it and that I could not, by some means or other, do better."

One night in August of 1944 Dorothy had snatched up a book to take down to the shelter as an air-raid siren sounded. It was Dante's Inferno, inspired by her reading of The Figure of Beatrice, a book by Charles Williams. Dante's work proved to be a compelling power, a revelation. She rejoiced in Dante's narrative skills, his lucid writing and dramatic powers. Her last great undertaking was the translation of his Divine Comedy, but she was to die before finishing the third volume, Paradise. Penguin published the work, which brought Dante to millions.

While much has been written on Dorothy L. Sayers, Barbara Reynolds has provided a unique insight into Sayers the writer and woman. Reynolds knew Dorothy for eleven years due to their shared interest in Dante, and she finished the translation of the Divine Comedy. Much of Dorothy's correspondence is reproduced in this volume, and with Reynolds's unique insights, we are able to see more clearly this brilliant and complex woman.

Daniel Patrick King Whitefish Bay, Wi.