I bought the entire series (minus the non-Sayers books and short stories) on ebay and am using my commutes and lunch breaks to read them. Nobody spoil anything, please! I’ve just started the 3rd book (I’m reading them in order) and I’m having fun. Since I’ve been assured they just keep getting better I’m giddy with anticipation. They’re so funny (in a quite dry way) and I love how she writes. I’m often going back to read paragraphs or sentences a couple of times, just smiling to myself.
It’s interesting how I keep running across words and phrases that seem so modern but then realizing that the books were written in England in the 1920’s. Like today, I read the word “canoodling” which I thought was a recent word made up by a trash tabloid.
That’s all. I just wanted to express that I look forward to being part of the Wimsey club.
Congratulations! Since I don’t remember which order they’re in, which one’s the third one and which two have you read?
When you get to The Nine Tailors, let me know. I used to do change ringing and some of the things in that book can be harder to get if you don’t know much about it. Meanwhile, enjoy the books.
This is the list I’m working from, based on the Wikipedia article on Wimsey.
Whose Body?, 1923
Clouds of Witness, 1926
Unnatural Death, 1927
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928
Strong Poison, 1931
Five Red Herrings, 1931
Have His Carcase, 1932
Murder Must Advertise, 1933
The Nine Tailors, 1934
Gaudy Night, 1935
Busman’s Honeymoon, 1937
I read Whose Body? awhile back, and though I liked Wimsey and Bunter and Mother the case itself wasn’t that interesting so I didn’t pursue the series, though I did order them all from someone who was selling them as one set on ebay, and they sat on the shelf. Then, last week, I decided to start again. I pretty much breezed through Clouds of Witness. I liked the story, characters and setup, and her writing. The only thing I didn’t like about it was Wimsey’s continual Cockneyish accent, that is, more often than not dropping the g on words, such as bein’ and doin’ and wantin’ which was annoying just because I could hear him in my mind’s ear talking like Eliza Doolittle’s dad instead of a suave upper-crust dandy. Talking like that to fit in while investigating and interviewing someone from the lower classes, I can see, but he talked like that ALL the time, with everybody. What was up with that? He didn’t talk like that in the first book that I remember, and now I’m about halfway through Unnatural Death and I’ve only seen it happen a few times, which is a relief.
But other than that minor hiccup, I’m enjoying myself.
It was an upper-class affectation for a few years, and marked the speaker as a mindless dandy (a la Bertie Wooster)… which was Wimsey’s cover. My recollection is that the fad only lasted a short while, so in later books it’s dropped.
The modern equivalent in the U.S. would be having someone speak Valley-speak, conversation laced with “dude” and “like, awesome” and so forth. Or perhaps leet-speek. Was fashionable for a couple of years.
Thanks for that bit of info C K Dexter Haven! That makes it make sense. I’ll keep that in mind when I re-read the books (as I’m sure I will, over the years).
Zsofia, I can’t wait to get to Gaudy Nights and the others of the last three, but I promised myself I would read them in order and wasn’t going to skip ahead. I’ll revive this thread when I get done with it.
Hmm… I’m not sure. It may have been a fad at one time, but dropping the “g” like that is usually a marker of a “County” accent – the “huntin’, shootin’, fishin’” landed gentry. It’s an accent that’s still around, and fits Wimsey’s background, I think.
It’s a mistake to think that the upper classes necessarily speak precise and correct standard English – that’s more likely from the educated middle classes.
See, I don’t know that much about it, but my guess was somewhere along those lines; that it was somehow the way “cool” guys in his, um, peer group talked. I figured that Sayers tried to get that across, realized that she was overselling it, largely eschewed it in later books.
Well, you’ll have to define how you’re thinking of “cool”, but to my mind a County accent would be almost the opposite.
To my mind, “cool” in post-First War England would be the metropolitan “bright young things”, the fashion-conscious, urban party-going set: sex, drugs and… er, jazz, probably. A County accent would mark Peter as being more inclined towards traditional values, noblesse oblige, stewardship of the land and so on.
It’s not an accent that is (or was) stereotypically associated with great intellectual acumen, incidentally.
I almost always read books in order, but in this case I didn’t make it. I still need to go back and read *Murder *and Nine Tailors because after Have His Carcase I got excited about Harriet Vane so I skipped ahead to Gaudy Night.
Yeah, I’m mad at myself because I couldn’t help reading all the Harriet Vane ones first. Oh well.
ETA - although those two don’t have Harriet in them they are extremely awesome, especially Murder Must Advertise - Sayers evidently worked in an ad firm like the one in the book, and the 20’s advertising details are so awesome and fun.
Murder Must Advertise is my favorite Wimsey novel. It’s a cool mystery, plus a fascinating look at real people doing real jobs in the 1920s, which you don’t really get in her other books. And, as a bonus, you also get a peek into the world of the Bright Young Things.
Gaudy Night is one of my favorite books ever. I tend to think of it as a Harriet Vane novel than a Wimsey novel. Sayers does a beautiful job of portraying the joys and pains of scholarship. I love her descriptions of life at Shrewsbury. I actually think the book suffers when Wimsey comes on the scene and things get ooey-gooey.
The thing about Murder Must Advertise is some of the advertising stuff sounds like it could apply today. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the Swiffer campaigns remind me of the book sometimes.
Thrones, Dominations, 1998 (not finished by Sayers—completed by Jill Paton Walsh) A Presumption of Death, 2002 (written by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on The Wimsey Papers)
Thanks for the discussion about Wimsey’s speech patterns. I feel far less up-in-arms about it now. It’s very interesting. This is a common speech from Sir Peter in Clouds of Witness:
The next paragraph shows how his mother speaks.
And next, Sir Impey Biggs, who has the most wonderful name:
grin That made me laugh out loud, something I’m doing often as I read.
While he does drop his g’s (is that a correct use of an apostrophe? It looks better than gs) in the first book, Whose Body?, he doesn’t do it anywhere near as often. Here’s a common passage (funny too).
laugh I love the back-and-forth between Wimsey and Parker, and Wimsey and Bunter.
In the third book, Unnatural Death, he still drops his g’s but yeah, not nearly as much. In looking for a passage that illustrates it, I found this, which doesn’t illustrate it, but is nonetheless quite delightful, as he explains to Parker about his using Miss Climpson as his Girl Friday.
I LOVE it! I hope Miss Climpson appears again. She’s a hoot. I’ll even forgive her for her use of the word “N|GG3R” (caps hers, leeting is mine so it won’t come up in searches) in one of her letters to Wimsey, because I suppose it was in normal usage at that time.
I’m still only about halfway through Unnatural Death, but I love the fact that two important characters are quite queer. To me, at this point in the book, it’s obvious that Miss Agatha Dawson (the sadly deceased) and her previous house-mate Miss Clara Whittaker (great-aunt of the Prime Suspect at this point) are a loving, interesting and accomplished lesbian couple. I hope this impression doesn’t change as I continue reading.
The one with the dog collar is a bit much for me, though.