The Lord and the Lady

Ian Rutledge is not the first fictional detective to fight demons enraged during WWI. Lord Peter Wimsey fought his own demons as the main character of his own series, created by Dorothy Sayers.

Dorothy Sayers was born on this day in 1893. She was born in Oxford, England, the daughter of a teacher and minister, and she became one of the first women to graduate from Oxford University. She studied modern languages and medieval literature.

Although she is best known for Wimsey's mysteries, she believed her greatest accomplishment was in her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Neither was her first foray into the literary world; her first published works were collections of poetry. Over the years, she also wrote plays, short stories, and novels.

Dorothy Sayers and G.K. Chesterton founded The Detection Club, a group of mystery writers in the 1930s. Other members included Agatha Christie, Hugh Walpole, Emma Orczy, and Anthony Berkeley. Like many writers' groups over the years, they met regularly to critique and encourage each other, and to eat. The group still exists.

Sayers was a devoted Christian, raised in the church by her father the rector. She famously wrote about God's willingness to die for the creation He had made. "'So that is the outline of the official story—the talk of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him.' As if she hadn't already made the point, Dorothy Sayers continued: 'This is the dogma we find so dull—this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.'" (from Christianity Today) Along with her friend Chesterton, she was a great apologist. After her Wimsey mysteries, she turned her significant talents to scholarly journals and apologia.

Dorothy Sayers died in 1957.