Dorothy L. Sayers
| Name: | Dorothy Leigh Sayers |
| Also Known As: | Dorothy L. Sayers |
| Occupation: | Author |
| Medium: | Books (Novels and short stories) |
| Works: | Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries |
| Official Website(s): | |
| Fan Website(s): | |
| On Fanlore: | Related pages |
Dorothy L. Sayers was a British novelist who lived from 1893 to 1957. Her most fannishly significant work was the Lord Peter Wimsey detective series. The Wimsey books are sometimes collectively called "The Corpus."
Although some of the books in the series are marred by occasional anti-Semitism, they remain appealing to fans for many reasons. These include Lord Peter's perseverance in the face of personal vulnerability (a veteran of WWI, he suffers from PTSD), the strong bond between Peter and his manservant Mervyn Bunter and the canonical romance between Peter and Harriet Vane, a conflicted yet strong female character who struggles to reconcile her desire for independence with her feelings for Lord Peter.
Wimsey Fiction from Pro Authors
Sayers herself once wrote a short piece, The Young Lord Peter Consults Sherlock Holmes, for a BBC radio broadcast or for the BBC's Radio Times magazine (1954) in which a very young Peter Wimsey traveled to Baker Street in order to consult Sherlock Holmes[1] about a lost kitten.
Marion Mainwaring's Murder in Pastiche, or Nine Detectives All at Sea (1974) includes thinly disguised caricatures of nine detectives including Wimsey, Ellery Queen, Perry Mason, Mike Hammer, Nero Wolfe, etc.
Laurie R. King's third Mary Russell novel, A Letter of Mary (1996), features a cameo by a young Lord Peter Wimsey (named only as "Peter", and referenced elsewhere in the series as the "second son of a Duke"). However, King was forbidden from using the character again by the Sayers estate.[2]
In 1998, mystery author Jill Paton Walsh completed Sayers' unfinished Wimsey novel Thrones, Dominations, following it up with A Presumption of Death and The Attenbury Emeralds. Critical reaction was mixed.[3]
Author Stephen King once began a Peter Wimsey story in which Harriet had been killed during the Blitz; although it was never finished, or published, copies of the story fragment were apparently in circulation in the Stephen King fandom for some time.[4] It was very, very sad. Reaction from one section of Livejournal fandom was basically, "YOU CAN'T DO THAT." [5]
References
- ^ John W. Kennedy, Re: Sherlock Holmes / Doyle question Posted August 5, 2005. Accessed November 19, 2008.
- ^ R.J. Anderson, RUSS-L Frequently Asked Questions Last accessed December 3, 2008.
- ^ Wikipedia, Reception of Thrones, Dominations Last accessed November 19, 2008.
- ^ Cemetarydance.com, Two excerpt from Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished Last accessed November 19, 2008
- ^ Liviapenn on LJ, Oh, you guys... Posted April 12, 2007. Last accessed November 19, 2008