Dorothy L. Sayers

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Dorothy Sayers statue in Witham

Dorothy Leigh Sayers [ 'sɛ: ə̯z ], also: [ ˈseiəz ] (born June 13, 1893 in Oxford , † December 17, 1957 in Witham , Essex ) was an English writer, essayist and translator. Her detective novels, which contain astute, sensitive descriptions of the surroundings from the 1920s and 1930s, have established her reputation as one of the outstanding "British crime ladies".

Her work was largely forgotten at the time of her death. It was first rediscovered as part of the women's movement in the late 1960s. A processing of her Lord Peter Wimsey novels for a television series that the BBC produced in the early 1970s and aired from 1973 onwards made her known to a wide readership again. These novels are now considered to be important works in classic detective history, as they were mainly written by British authors in the period between the two world wars.

The British newspaper The Guardian added two of its crime novels, The Dead in the Bathtub (1923) and Murder Needs Advertising (1933), to its list of a thousand novels everyone should read in 2009 .

Life

childhood

Dorothy Sayers was born in 1893 in a house on Brewer Street, Oxford, where her father, the Reverend Henry Sayers, was the chaplain and principal of Christ Church Cathedral School, a private school adjacent to Christ Church College for the choirboys of the Christ Church Cathedral Choir. Her mother Helen Mary Leigh was the daughter of a lawyer , the maternal family belonged to the English landed gentry with a verifiable family history back to the reign of Henry III. Dorothy Sayers was the couple's only daughter. In addition to several servants , the Sayers' household also had two aunts and their paternal grandmother.

Although Sayers only spent the first four years of her childhood in Oxford, she clearly remembers details in the autobiographical fragment My Edwardian Childhood, such as trips with her nanny to the university campus, the beating of the bell towers and the shepherd dog playing the Christ Church Cathedral choir belonged to.

In 1897 her father accepted a pastorate in the east of England, near the village of Huntingdon . The Oxford servants, Henry Sayers' mother and one of the aunts moved with the family. The parish was largely isolated. Sayers was raised at home by her parents as well as a number of governesses . She could read when she was just over four years old. Her father started teaching her Latin from the age of six and thanks to her governesses she learned excellent French and passable German. Her teaching focused on literature , languages and music , but she was rarely taught in math and science . She seems to have inherited musical talent from her father. He gave her violin lessons from the age of six or seven , later she also learned to play the piano and received singing lessons . Sayers grew up largely isolated from children of the same age - class barriers prevented her from finding playmates in the parish. As an adult, she lamented her pampered childhood, when she was almost exclusively surrounded by much older people.

Boarding school and studies

Godolphin boarding school in 2006
Somerville College in 2006

Her parents decided in the summer of 1908 to send their daughter to Godolphin boarding school in Salisbury . This should pave the way for her university education. She started school in January 1909. While she was very well read and well trained in languages, she lagged far behind girls of the same age, especially in mathematics. She turned out to be neither particularly popular among her approximately 200 classmates nor among her teachers. She was judged to be gifted but superficial and was seen as incapable of dealing with criticism. Sayers played first violin in the school orchestra and played in the school theater, but found few close friends. At the request of her parents, she and her classmates were confirmed in 1910. Years later, she remembered that this experience, which she was reluctant to endure, led to a longstanding skepticism about religion, as she saw this step only as one corresponding to a meaningless tradition.

During a measles epidemic in the spring of 1911, she also fell ill with life-threatening bilateral pneumonia , which resulted in a long recovery period in the hospital and in her parents' parish. Sayers, who was almost 18 at the time, also lost all of her scalp hair due to the illness and returned to her boarding school wearing a wig in the fall of 1911, but was taken from school by her parents a little later when a scarlet fever epidemic broke out. She completed her schooling via distance learning and was preparing to apply for one of the scholarships at Somerville College , Oxford, then one of the two colleges open to women. She started her studies in autumn 1912. She studied classical and modern languages and graduated with First Class Honors in Medieval French in 1915 .

Unlike at boarding school, Sayers found like-minded people in Oxford. With another student she founded the "Mutual Admiration Society" in the first semester, a small group of students interested in writing with whom she stayed in contact for many years. Sayers dedicated her first crime novel The Dead in the Bathtub (1923) to a member of this group, namely Muriel "Jim" Jäger .

First publications

The outbreak of the First World War surprised her during a stay in France. As a volunteer, she initially helped to accommodate Belgian war refugees. After graduating, she initially planned to work for the Red Cross as a nurse in France. Nothing came of the plan, however, and she did not accept her father's offer to finance her postgraduate year at Oxford. Instead, she worked on poetry, twelve of her poems were published in December 1915 as part of an anthology. A year later she published her first own volume of poetry, Op. I. , edited by the Oxford publisher Basil Blackwell , who was also the first publisher of Aldous Huxley and Osbert and Sachverell Sitwell . She was able to place further poems in other publications. It was evident, however, that she would have to find a job if she did not want to continue living in her family home.

She eventually found a teaching position at a girls' school in Kingston upon Hull , an industrial town on the North Sea coast . The war-important port of this city was repeatedly the target of German bombings , during which Sayers had to seek refuge in cellars again and again. Due to the psychological stress, she began to lose the hair on her head again.

After Sayers had taught in Kingston upon Hull for two semesters, her father intervened. He had taken on a higher-paying pastoral position, and that extra income allowed him to make a deal with Basil Blackwell: if Blackwell trained his daughter in the publishing business, he would provide for her living. Sayers accepted this willingly: the position freed her from teaching, which was not very popular, and she was able to return to Oxford. In 1918 Blackwell published her second collection of poems, Catholic Tales and Christian Songs .

In May 1918, Sayer's work for Blackwell ended. It is unclear whether Basil Blackwell - who switched his publishing business to the publication of textbooks from that point on - quit Sayers or whether she left him of her own accord. She earned her living editing texts, doing some journalistic activities and tutoring.

The Lord Peter Wimsey novels

Sayers began thinking about crime novel writing around 1919. At that time she was working as an assistant at a private boarding school for boys in Verneuil, Normandy. The reason for this stay was a (ultimately unrequited) infatuation with Captain Eric Whelpton, who worked at this school. The faculty also included Charles Crichton, an Eton graduate and former cavalry officer. Although Sayers and Crichton did not hold each other in high esteem, Sayer's biographer Martha Hailey Dubose in particular pointed out parallels between the life of Crichton and the fictional Lord Peter Wimsey. Before Crichton lost his fortune during the war, he had lived in London not far from Wimsey's fictional address, frequented the same clubs, actively participated in London's social life, was a regular visitor to English country houses and employed an eccentric butler by the name of Bates, who was his officer boy during the time of the First World War .

During her time in Verneuil Sayers also dealt extensively with detective novels and discussed in letters with friends such as George Douglas Howard Cole the idea of ​​setting up a writing syndicate in order to write crime fiction together. Comparable writing syndicates already existed - the popular Sexton Blake series published in Pulp magazines was written by dozens of authors.

In September 1920 Sayers returned to London and, despite a few translation jobs, was initially largely dependent on her father's financial help to finance her living. She temporarily resumed teaching, but on Saturdays she studied criminology in the reading room of the British Museum . She wrote to her mother in January 1921:

"My detective novel begins happily with the discovery of a corpulent dead lady lying in a bathtub wearing nothing but her pince-nez"

Driven by her friend Muriel Jaeger, she continued to work on her crime story during the entire first half of 1921, while staying with her parents in the summer of that year she finished her work on The Dead in the Bathtub with Lord Peter Wimsey as the protagonist. A little later she found a job as a copywriter in the advertising agency SH Bensons in London and her temporary companion, the writer John Cournos , put her in contact with the American literary agent Boni and Liveright, who sold this novel to the British publisher Fisher Unwin Placed in the US as a serial in People's Magazine . John Cournos that with Sayers broke because they where sexual intercourse denied to him, is also the model for the character of Philip Boyes in the published 1930 crime novel Strong Poison ( Strong Poison ). For the figure, a woman's readiness for premarital intercourse is the test of the extent to which a woman is ready to submit to his will.

Illegitimate mother

At Christmas, Sayers introduced Bill White to her parents. Unlike Cournos, he was devoid of any literary ambitions. White occasionally worked as a car salesman and mechanic. In June 1923, Sayers knew she was pregnant by White, who had only now admitted that he was married to another woman. Mothering an illegitimate child had significant consequences in the 1920s. Sayers decided not to have an abortion, but at the same time managed to keep her pregnancy a secret from her friends, parents and employer. She took leave of absence from her employer two months before the birth, kept her parents away with an excuse and gave birth to a son on January 3, 1924 in a maternity home in Southbourne , whom she baptized John Anthony. Shortly before the birth, she had written to her cousin Ivy Amy Shrimpton, who was raising foster children with her mother. She had previously pretended that the child in question was a friend's child. It was only after her cousin agreed to take in the child that she confessed the full truth.

She resumed her work in the advertising agency a little later, and she separated from White a few months after the birth. Her second crime novel Diskrete Zeugen ( Clouds of Witness , published in 1926) was finished almost at the same time . Sayers was always distant from this work, which she had struggled to wrestle, because it reminded her of the difficult years 1922 to 1924. In a letter to John Cournos, one of the few people to whom she admitted her illegitimate child, she called it "a cursed book - associated with all forms of humiliation and misery."

On April 13, 1926, Sayers married Oswald Arthur "Mac" Fleming, a journalist and war veteran. Fleming was already divorced and had two daughters from his first marriage. Sayers, who never admitted her illegitimate son to her parents, was initially concerned that they would refuse to marry a divorced man - an unrecognized marriage according to Church of England teaching . A family scandal involving their father's brother, who had been caught red-handed in adultery, helped them accept the connection even if they did not attend the wedding ceremony.

Dorothy Sayers and John Anthony

Commemorative plaque to Dorothy Sayers, 23 & 24 Gt. James Street, WC1

Mac Fleming had reacted calmly to Sayers' having an illegitimate son. He met him in May 1926, but plans to integrate John Anthony into the family were repeatedly postponed. Both Sayers and Fleming had extensive work commitments, and the 23 Great James Street apartment that Sayers lived in from 1921 to 1929 was too small to accommodate a child. Martha Hailey Dubose also doubts the seriousness of Sayer's intentions to raise her own son. Even when the Great James Street apartment was expanded enough to accommodate a four-year-old child and a nanny, she left the child with her cousin. In 1935 the couple adopted Sayer's son de iure. He never lived in Sayers' household, however, but grew up in her cousin's household until he was old enough to go to boarding school.

Sayers went to great lengths to ensure that their son received a good upbringing. There was close correspondence between her and her son. At the beginning of 1939, for example, he had an intensive exchange with her about whether he should study humanities or natural sciences. He won a scholarship to Balliol College , Oxford in 1941 , but postponed his studies to serve the war effort and work for the Royal Air Force as a technician. He did not begin his studies until 1945 and finished it - like his mother before - with an excellent result.

John Anthony must have guessed since his youth that Dorothy Sayers was his mother. This suspicion was only confirmed when he received his birth certificate on the basis of a passport application. It is not known whether there was ever a fuller discussion of their mutual past between Dorothy Sayers and John Anthony.

Dorothy Sayers and Mac Fleming

Mac Fleming was a WWI veteran, a victim of a gas attack and shell shock . The consequences of these war injuries and trauma did not become apparent until the second half of the 1920s. By 1928 his health had deteriorated so much that he had to give up his position at News of the World . As a freelance journalist, he no longer had a steady income and Fleming also had tax debts. The couple was increasingly dependent on Sayer's income.

In September 1928, Sayer's father died unexpectedly. In addition to the mourning for the loss of her father, Sayers was also confronted with the question of what would become of her mother and her aunt Mabel Leigh, who after the pastor's death no longer had the right to live in the rectory. Sayers eventually bought a house in Witham , Essex, which the couple moved into with the pastor's widow and Sayer's aunt. The house remained the couple's main residence even after Sayer's mother died in 1929 and Sayer's aunt in 1930.

The Detection Club

Sayers was working on the only detective novel that did not have Lord Peter Wimsey as the investigative main character at the time. The Documents in the Case (dt. The file Harrison , 1930) on which she shared with Robert Eustace worked, based on an actual murder case: Edith Jessie Thompson and Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters murdered the husband of Thompson and were it executed in 1923 . Sayers used the form of a letter novel , which gave her the opportunity to reproduce the murder case in her novel from the perspective of different first-person narrators. The novel is also an homage to the British writer Wilkie Collins . She also began working on a biography of Wilkie Collins around this time. The work dragged on for over two decades and was not completed by her death.

In principle, Sayers had never neglected her scientific interests. Writing detective novels was her livelihood, but her goal remained to write literary works as well. These include her translation of Tristan in Brittany , a 12th-century poem by the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas.

Sayers is one of the founding members of the Detection Club , an association for the promotion of the classic crime novel, which was formally founded in 1932, but whose members were already in contact with each other. Members had to commit to complying with certain rules that were primarily intended to ensure fairness towards the reader. Prominent members were e.g. B. Agatha Christie and GK Chesterton , EC Bentley , George Douglas Howard Cole and his wife Margaret and Ronald Knox .

Turning away from the detective novel

The relationship with Mac Fleming became increasingly problematic in the 1930s. Fleming, who was increasingly unable to work due to his war injuries, suffered from being married to an author who far outshone him in public perception. What is certain is that Sayers considered leaving her husband, but ultimately failed to do so out of a sense of duty.

Canterbury Cathedral, for whose festival Sayers wrote plays

Sayers could also increasingly afford to refrain from writing detective novels. In October 1936, Margaret Babington, the organizer of the Canterbury Festival at Canterbury Cathedral , asked her if she would like to write a play for the annual festival. It was unusual for them to be chosen. The two plays at the previous Canterbury Festivals were TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Charles Williams' Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury . Martha Hailey Dubose explains the choice by stating that there were many experienced British playwrights, but few who were known, competent and at the same time Christian. The play The Zeal of Thy House , the Sayers for the Canterbury Festival wrote, initiated a decade in which Sayers focused almost exclusively on plays, essays and theological books.

In 1939 she was commissioned to write another play for the festival. The Devil to Pay premiered in June 1939. In 1938 she also wrote a nativity play for the BBC's children's radio program . Your fictional character Lord Peter Wimsey celebrated resurrection in a different form. Between November 1939 and January 1940, the British magazine Spectator published eleven letters written by various members of the Wimsey family to Lord Peter, who was serving on the front lines somewhere in Europe.

She also continued her work for the BBC: The Man Born to Be King was originally intended as a half-hour series on the life of Christ for the children's program, but then developed into a series for the general public after various arguments between Sayers and executives of the BBC Program that found an enthusiastic audience. Finally, in 1941, The Mind of the Maker came out, a collection of essays on the creative process. From a literary point of view, this is her most important work. This was followed by her translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy .

Mac Fleming died on June 9, 1950 after a long and serious illness. Despite the tensions that existed in his marriage to him, Sayers wrote to her friends saying that she missed her husband. Nine months later, Sayer's cousin Ivy Shrimpton, who raised Sayer's son John Anthony, also died. Sayers was heir to the fortune of around 4,000 British pounds, but she passed the money on to her son.

Dorothy Sayers died of a stroke in her apartment on December 17, 1957, at the age of 63 . Her will established her son John Anthony as heir, to whom she left £ 34,000. He insisted to the press that he was their adopted child. Dorothy Sayers' ashes were buried in a chapel in the bombed-out St. Anne's Church in Soho, where a plaque to commemorate her has been located since 1978.

plant

Dorothy L. Sayers (she insisted on the "L.") is best known for her amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey . This English aristocrat is the protagonist of a number of detective novels and short stories of high literary standing. The choice of a noble amateur detective is first and foremost a literary device: One of the fundamental problems of detective novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries was the social class of the investigating police officer. He typically belonged to social classes whose members a covert determination in the upper social milieu was impossible: language, insufficient knowledge of manners and education marked them as clearly not belonging to this class. At the same time, however, in particular crime novels with a plot met with a particular interest in reading among members of the upper classes. The American author Anna Katharine Green introduced a solution to this problem for the first time with her detective novel That Affair Next Door (published in 1897), which later detective authors took up several times. The investigating police inspector is assigned another figure who belongs to this layer. The figure of Lord Peter Wimsey is a modification of this trick. Lord Peter Wimsey is the main character in Dorothy Sayer's novels, who is complemented by Inspector Parker.

Some of these crime novels were filmed in two series by the BBC, the first in the 1970s with Ian Carmichael and the second in 1987 with Edward Petherbridge in the role of Lord Peter Wimsey . In some Wimsey thrillers, Sayers puts the crime writer and soon also an amateur detective Harriet Vane alongside her hero, who embodies the at that time still difficult to enforce, frowned upon female gender claim to equality . Over the course of several novels, a relationship develops between Vane and Lord Peter, which eventually leads to the marriage of the two.

Dorothy L. Sayers' second detective is Montague Egg. Mr. Egg is a traveling salesman for wines and other spirits and does not like to see one of his - mostly wealthy - customers bless the time. Eleven short stories are about his adventures (in: In the Teeth of the Evidence, Hangman's Holiday ).

In 1930 Dorothy Sayers, with Mac Fleming's assistance, compiled an anthology of crime short stories, which was released in Great Britain under the title Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror and in the United States under the title Omnibus of Crime . The short stories are preceded by a short literary history of the detective novel written by Sayers, which, according to Martha Hailey Dubose, is one of the best and most readable that has ever been written.

Sayers herself found her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy into English her best work.

She also wrote religious essays and plays. In 1937 she wrote on behalf of the "Friends of the Cathedral" (Friends of Canterbury Cathedral ) the spectacle The zeal of thy house ( Zeal for your house ), which - like TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and Charles Williams ' Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury (1936) - performed in church. The best known is probably the radio play series Zum König born ( The Man Born to Be King ), which was commissioned by the BBC.

In worldview she is considered a Christian humanist .

Awards

  • 1996 Rusty Dagger : Award for the best novel of the 30s by the British Crime Writers' Association (CWA) for The Nine Tailors (German: The nine tailors . Wunderlich, Tübingen 1958. Since 1980 also under the title Der Glockenschlag )
  • 2007 Archie Goodwin Award : Award for the literary life's work of the American Nero Wolfe Society

Publications

Lord Peter Wimsey novels

  • Whose body? T. Fisher Unwin, 1923 ( The dead in the bathtub , also one dead too few )
  • Clouds of Witness. T. Fisher Unwin, 1926 ( Discreet witnesses , also Lord Peter's most serious case )
  • Unnatural death. Ernest Benn, 1927. The Dawson Pedigree , in the US Not caused by natural causes
  • The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Ernest Benn, 1928 ( Trouble in the Bellona Club , also It happened in the Bellona Club )
  • Strong poison. Gollancz, 1929 ( strong poison , also mysterious poison )
  • Five Red Herrings. Gollancz, 1931, in the USA Suspicious Characters ( Five false tracks , also five red herrings )
  • Have his carcase. Gollancz, 1932 ( At the hour in question , also My Hobby: Murder and The Find in the Devil's Cliffs )
  • Murder Must Advertise. Gollancz, 1933 ( murder needs advertising )
  • The Nine Tailors. Gollancz, 1934 ( The bells strike , also The nine tailors ; background information: see alternating bells )
  • Gaudy Night. Gollancz, 1935 ( riot in Oxford )
  • Busman's honeymoon. Gollancz, 1937 ( wedding comes before the fall , also Lord Peter's adventurous wedding voyage )
  • Thrones, dominations. 1998 ( In good company. Lord Peters last case. Posthumously, from an unfinished manuscript completed by Jill Paton Walsh )

Walsh's novel A Presumption of Death , 2002 ( Murder in lean times , even Lord Peter very last case ) is based on the figures and the during the Second World War in the Spectator published Wimsey Papers of Dorothy L. Sayers.

Collections of short stories

  • Lord Peter Views the Body. Gollancz, 1928-12 detective stories to Lord Peter, including: 1. The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers ( The man with the copper fingers) , 4. The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag ( The pig in a poke )
  • Hangman's Holiday. Gollancz, 1933-12 new detective stories, including: 1. The Image in the Mirror ( The image in the mirror) , 11. The Man Who Knew How ( The man who knew decision )
  • In the Teeth of the Evidence and 16 other Stories. 1939 - including: 1. In the Teeth of the Evidence (fireworks), 13. The Inspiration of Mr. Budd (Figaro's inspiration)
  • Striding folly. 1972 (3 stories, German not published in this compilation)

Other crime novels

together with Robert Eustace :

  • The Documents in the Case. Ernest Benn, 1930 ( The Harrison Files , also The Harrison Case )

Participation in chain novels of the Detection Club :

  • The floating admiral. 1931 ( The Admiral's Last Voyage )
  • Six Against the Yard. 1936
  • Double Death: a Murder Story. 1939 (double death)

Religious works

  • The Greatest Drama Ever Staged and The Triumph of Easter , London 1938. ( The greatest drama of all time , including The Triumph of Easter )
  • Creed or chaos? (rel. essays) 1940
  • Strong meat. [A religious tract.] 1940
  • The Devil to pay 1939 (also for the friends of Canterbury Cathedral)
  • The Other Six Deadly Sins. An address given to the Public Morality Council. London 1943
  • The Man Born to be King. A play-cycle on the life of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Written for broadcasting, etc., Gollancz, London, 1943. (Born to the King), radio play.
  • The Just Vengeance. rel. Drama, London 1946
  • Unpopular opinions. rel. Essays, London 1946 a. ö.
  • Creed or Chaos? and other essays in popular theology. London 1947 u. ö.
  • Homo Creator. A Trinitarian exegesis of artistic creation . Schwann 1953

Poems

  • Op 1. Blackwell 1916.
  • Catholic Tales and Christian Songs. Blackwell 1919.

Youth literature

  • Even the parrot. Methuen, 1944

Essays

  • Begin Here. Gollancz, 1940
  • The Mind of the Maker. Methuen, 1942
  • Unpopular Opinions. Gollancz, 1946
  • The Lost Tools of Learning. 1947 [1]

Translations

  • Tristan in Brittany: being the fragments of The Romance of Tristan written by Thomas the Anglo-Norman. Drawn into the English by Dorothy Leigh Sayers. With an introduction by George Saintsbury . Ernest Benn, London, 1929.
  • The Comedy of Dante Alighieri , the Florentine (La Divina comedia, divine comedy ). Translated into verse by Dorothy L. Sayers, completed by Barbara Reynolds, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1949–62.
    • Hell, 1949
    • Purgatory, 1955
    • Paradise (Barbara Reynolds), 1962
  • La Chanson de Roland. The song of Roland. ( Rolandslied ), Penguin, Harmondsworth 1957 (their last work)

literature

Web links

Commons : Dorothy L. Sayers  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 161.
  2. ↑ 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List , accessed February 4, 2014.
  3. ^ B. Reynolds: Dorothy L. Sayers. Her Life and Soul . Hodder & Stoughton, London a. a. 1993, p. 13.
  4. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 163.
  5. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 163.
  6. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 165.
  7. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 167.
  8. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 169.
  9. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 170.
  10. ^ B. Reynolds: Dorothy L. Sayers. Her Life and Soul . Hodder & Stoughton, London a. a. 1993, p. 78.
  11. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 174.
  12. ↑ Op. I. , full text (English)
  13. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 174.
  14. ↑ See Susan R. Grayzel: At Home and under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz. Cambridge University Press 2012, ISBN 978-0-521-87494-6 , pp. 61 f.
  15. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 177.
  16. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 178.
  17. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 178.
  18. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 179.
  19. ↑ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 180. The original quote is: My detective story begins brightly, with a fat lady found dead in her bath with nothing on but her pince-nez.
  20. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 182.
  21. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 184.
  22. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 184.
  23. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 188.
  24. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 189.
  25. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 189.
  26. ^ B. Reynolds: Dorothy L. Sayers. Her Life and Soul . Hodder & Stoughton, London a. a. 1993, p. 277.
  27. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 210.
  28. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 211.
  29. ↑ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 191.
  30. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 192.
  31. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 193.
  32. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 204.
  33. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 207.
  34. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 208.
  35. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 213.
  36. ↑ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 9.
  37. ^ A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  38. ^ Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 192.
  39. ↑ Doppelter Tod (1988) in the catalog of the German National Library
personal data
SURNAME Sayers, Dorothy L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sayers, Dorothy Leigh (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British crime novelist and translator
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Oxford , England
DATE OF DEATH 17th December 1957
Place of death Witham (Essex) , England