Dorothy Sayers, like G.K. Chesterton, is best known for a popular series of murder mysteries, still avidly read today. These are the Lord Peter Wimsey stories, which include such catchy titles as: Whose Body?, Five Red Herrings, Clouds of Witness and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.
However, Sayers was a Christian scholar and writer of great ability, producing one of the finest English translations of Dante’s Divine Comedy ever done, with notes illuminating the Christian meaning; a series of radio plays on the life of Christ, The Man Born to Be King (1941); a superb apologetic work entitled The Mind of the Maker; and a number of other works, most still in print.
Dorothy Sayers was born in an Essex vicarage and was educated at Oxford. Her first work, a book of poetry called Op I, was published by Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford. Her first literary success, the Peter Wimsey series, began in 1923. During World War II she resided at Oxford and was acquainted with C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield. However, from 1929 until her death in 1957 she maintained a house at Witham, Essex, from which she commuted into London and the B.B.C. This house now is the headquarters of the Dorothy Sayers Society. Her ashes, however, rest beneath the tower of St Anne’s, Soho, near the Theatreland to which she contributed so much.