Dorothy L. Sayers

Also known as Dorothy Sayers, Dorothy Leigh Sayers, Dorothy Leigh Sayers Fleming, Dorothy L Sayers, Dorothy Leigh Fleming, Dorothy L(eigh) Sayers

English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer (1893-1957)

OverviewAI-generated

Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893–1957) was a British writer, translator, novelist, and playwright. Born in Oxford and educated at Somerville College, she worked in the fields of poetry, essay, novel, and mystery fiction. Her notable works include *Whose Body?*, *Clouds of Witness*, *Unnatural Death*, and *The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club*. She wrote in English and also spoke French, Italian, and Latin.

Sayers was influenced by Dante Alighieri, G. K. Chesterton, Thomas Traherne, and William Wordsworth. Her religious affiliation was Anglicanism. She died of natural causes, specifically coronary thrombosis, in Witham, Essex.

Synthesized by Vinony from 38 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Crossref, Wikiquote, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 13 June 1893
Died: 17 December 1957
Works: 402

Top works

Clouds of witness
The best horror stories
The nine tailors
The collected edition of detective stories
Ur of the Chaldees

via Open Library + Wikidata

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Dorothy
Gender: female
Citizenship: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Place of birth: Oxford
Place of death: Witham
Occupation: philologist
Position held: chairperson
Employer: Blackwell UK
Languages spoken: Latin
Religion: Anglicanism
Field of work: detective fiction
Image: Dorothy L. Sayers.png

Show 12 more facts

date of birth: 1893-06-13
date of death: 1957-12-17
topic's main category: Category:Dorothy L. Sayers
influenced by: Ronald Knox
Commons category: Dorothy L. Sayers
birth name: Dorothy Leigh Sayers
manner of death: natural causes
name in native language: Dorothy Sayers
cause of death: coronary thrombosis
writing language: English language
married name: Dorothy Fleming
member of: Detection Club

Sources (10)

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Encyclopedic overview

Dorothy Leigh Sayers (/sɛərz/ SAIRZ; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic.

Born in Oxford, Sayers was brought up in rural East Anglia and educated at Godolphin School in Salisbury and Somerville College, Oxford, graduating with first class honours in medieval French. She worked as an advertising copywriter between 1922 and 1929 before success as an author brought her financial independence. Her first novel, Whose Body?, was published in 1923. Between then and 1939 she wrote ten more novels featuring the upper-class amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. In 1930, in Strong Poison, she introduced a leading female character, Harriet Vane, the object of Wimsey's love. Harriet appears sporadically in future novels, resisting Lord Peter's proposals of marriage until Gaudy Night in 1935, six novels later.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Dorothy L. Sayers” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.