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Concept
Dorothy L. Sayers
Summary
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (sɛərz; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.
She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Sayers was considered one of its four "Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.
Sayers is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays. She considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. Sayers's obituarist, writing in The New York Times in 1957, noted that many critics at the time regarded her mystery The Nine Tailors as her finest literary achievement.
Sayers, an only child, was born on 13 June 1893 at the Headmaster's House on Brewer Street in Oxford. She was the daughter of Helen Mary Leigh and her husband, the Rev. Henry Sayers. Her mother was a daughter of Frederick Leigh, a solicitor whose family roots were in the landed gentry in the Isle of Wight, and had been born at "The Chestnuts", Millbrook, Hampshire. Her father, originally from Littlehampton, West Sussex, was a chaplain of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School.
When Sayers was six, her father started teaching her Latin. She grew up in the tiny village of Bluntisham in Huntingdonshire after her father was given the living there as rector of Bluntisham-cum-Earith. The church graveyard next to the elegant Regency-style rectory features the surnames of several characters from her mystery The Nine Tailors. She was inspired by her father's restoration of the Bluntisham church bells in 1910. The nearby River Great Ouse and the Fens invite comparison with the book's vivid description of a massive flood around the village.
From 1909 Sayers was educated at the Godolphin School, a boarding school in Salisbury.
Official source
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