Lord Peter

Born in 1893, Dorothy Leigh Sayers stands today as one of the greatest authors of the Golden Age of Crime Fiction. She was a founding member and early president of London’s famed Detection Club, crafting the organization’s induction oath ritual. The house on 24 Great James Street in London where Sayers lived from 1921 until 1929 bears a blue English Heritage plaque commemorating her residence. Sayers’ best known literary creation was the aristocrat and amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey, who appeared in nearly a dozen novels, plus a number of short stories and stage plays. Her stories have also been adapted for the big and small screen. Between 1972 and 1975, BBC aired a series of Sayers adaptations called The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries, starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter. In 1987, BBC aired another adaptation called A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery with Edward Petherbridge portraying the gentleman sleuth. Though most famous for her crime fiction and her connections to fellow Golden Age authors like Agatha Christie, G.K. Chesterton, and E.C. Bentley, Sayers’ tireless pen also produced poetry, essays, and letters. She counted among her famous literary friends the likes of T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis. Asked to identify her own best work, Sayers was inclined to say that it was her translation of Dante’s narrative poem Divine Comedy, for which she taught herself old Italian. Sayers completed the first two parts, and was still at work on Paradise at the time of her death in 1957.