Busman's Honeymoon

Have recently read a couple more Dorothy Sayers mysteries, featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and, in this case, former accused murderer and Wimsey's long-time flame, Harriet Vane. These are delightful reads - very well-crafted mysteries, with excellent writing. Sayers was a classical scholar - she spoke many languages fluently and her translation of Dante was highly regarded. (Amusingly, Wimsey's mother casts disparaging remarks on the contemporary novel The Stars Look Down, elsewhere praised within this blog!) As well as being an excellent mystery, Busman's Honeymoon has the fringe benefit of dueling quotations - Lord Peter and the investigating constable keep commenting on events in the investigation by quoting various poets and playwrights, challenging each other to identify the author. Highly recommended.

Dorothy Sayers!

Recently read two excellent mysteries by Dorothy Sayers, Wrong Body and Unnatural Death. I enjoyed the first, but thought the second was really great. I appreciate the wit (and silliness) of Lord Peter Wimsey (whom the prominent critic Edmund Wilson described as "...a dreadful stock English nobleman of the casual and debonair kind, with the embarrassing name of Lord Peter Wimsey"). Oh well.

Sayers (Wikipedia says she preferred the pronunciation "Sares" to "Say-ers") led a very interesting life, with accomplishments in many fields. Her mysteries, usually featuring Wimsey or the smart and independent Harriet Vane, are clever and urbane, with interesting plots, often featuring specialty information on subjects such as medical practice, or "change ringing" ("...the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a series of mathematical patterns called "changes". It differs from many other forms of campanology in that no attempt is made to produce a conventional melody" - thanks Wikipedia!), or advertising (Sayers worked, very successfully, for many years at an advertising firm that later became Ogilvy and Mather).

Sayers was precocious and learned - her father, chaplain at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, began teaching her Latin at age 6, and she studied modern languages and medieval literature at Oxford, eventually becoming one of the first women to receive a degree there. Sayers considered her best work to be the well-regarded translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Edmund Wilson, HA!