Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. Born in Oxford, she was brought up in rural East Anglia and educated at Godolphin School in Salisbury and at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating with first-class honours in medieval French. She lived from 1893 to 1957, and is best known for her detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. She worked as an advertising copywriter between 1922 and 1929 before success as an author brought financial independence. Her first novel, Whose Body?, appeared in 1923, and up to 1939 she wrote ten more novels featuring the upper-class amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, introducing Harriet Vane in Strong Poison in 1930.