[QUOTE=delphica]
If you like reading books about books, I enjoyed Conundrums for the Long Weekend: England, Dorothy L. Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey by McGregor and Lewis. The authors go through each Wimsey book and give a lot of context for the social and political references. The thing I like about it is that you can tell they are a bit of Sayers fanboys themselves, and that comes through even when they are giving examples of less successful aspects of the books. It’s critical, but you don’t get the feeling she is being trashed in any way.
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That sounds fantastic! Thank you. I’ll definitely look for it.
[QUOTE=delphica]
You might also be interested in Sayers on Holmes, which is a slim collection of her essays on Sherlock Holmes. I believe it’s out of print, but not usually that difficult to find on ebay or one of the used book sites.
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I’ve never read any Sherlock Holmes but I’ll keep this in mind if I decide to get more in the genre and start reading some Holmes books. Or do you think it would be interesting even to a Holmes virgin?
[QUOTE=delphica]
I have to confess that her theological writing is a little beyond me.
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I’m not at all interested in anything theological, although The Mind of the Maker sounds fascinating, but I did see some others on Amazon I will definitely get, such as The Complete Stories, Are Women Human? and a Sayers biography, Her Life and Soul. Next paycheck, definitely.
[QUOTE=MarcusF]
As she went on - and she had a secure audience - she allowed her own literary style to develop and show through.
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Thanks for the information!
[QUOTE=MarcusF]
I don’t have a copy of Clouds of Witness to hand but are you sure this was his mother, the Dowager Duchess? It sounds much more like Helen, his sister in law, the Duchess of Denver, Gerald wife.
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blink 
:eek: I said I “pretty much breezed though” the book and I guess I did. I certainly hiccuped somewhere. I thought that was their mother! And later, I was shocked to read that Gerald was married and had children (or at least, a son) because until then (thought I) I hadn’t read a word about them. I must have slept through an entire section where they were mentioned and the Mrs. came to Riddlesdale. I know the joy of re-reading books and catching things you didn’t catch the first time, but that was a pretty big thing to miss. How embarrassing.
On the previous page (pg 62 of my edition, Chapter III “Mudstains and Bloodstains”) the Dowager Duchess is mentioned. (The Dowager Duchess had once remarked: “Sir Impey Biggs is the handsomest man in England, and no woman will ever care twopence for him.”) and then on the next page are the passages I quoted (“I was just saying to Sir Impey,” said the Duchess and “I am doing my very best to persuade him, Duchess,” said Sir Impey,…) so naturally I assumed it was his mother. Still, it (the whole Dowager Duchess vs. the Duchess of Denver) is something I need to pay attention to the next time I re-read the book.
[QUOTE=LurkMeister]
The Lord Peter stories in Striding Folly (“Striding Folly”, The Haunted Policeman" and “Talboys”) are included in Lord Peter, so you don’t need to try to find a copy of it.
Hangman’s Holiday and In the Teeth of the Evidence also have between them (I think) all of her Montague Egg stories, which I also like. There is another collection, Dorothy L Sayers: The Complete Stories, but I don’t belief it has any Lord Peter stories that aren’t in the other collections.
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Thanks for the tip about Lord Peter/Striding Folly. Since I like the way she writes I’ll probably get it at some point anyway just for the other stories, unless whatever else is in there is in the, hopefully properly-named Complete Stories.
MarcusF, I can’t answer your question, but here is the Amazon US page for Lord Peter. I had bought and paid for the other books of short stories before I found Lord Peter (I hit ebay first, when I should have gone to Amazon first), but I’m not concerned. It’ll be nice to have them all in one place.
