Sayers, Dorothy L(eigh)

Sayers, Dorothy L(eigh) (1893-1957), British writer. A student of medieval literature, she was one of the first women to receive a degree from the University of Oxford. After working in a London advertising agency, the setting for her later novel Murder Must Advertise (1933), she began to write detective stories, beginning with Whose Body? (1923). It featured the dashing, witty aristocrat-detective Lord Peter Wimsey, who solved the crimes in her ten subsequent books. Works such as The Nine Tailors (1934), which involves disquisitions on the art of ringing church bells, and Gaudy Night (1935), set in a woman's college at Oxford, are examples of Sayers's erudite, complexly plotted approach. Her other works include theological studies and works on Dante and translations of his Divine Comedy (1949 and 1955).