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A gifted public communicator, Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) believed that those who slept through church had no idea what dynamite the gospel really was. Through her plays and essays, she tried to get people to see, as she said, that "The Dogma Is the Drama." And she succeeded brilliantly—opening up the power and truth of orthodox Christianity for many who had abandoned the lukewarm cultural faith of England's religious establishment. CH&B senior editor Chris Armstrong talked recently with Sayers's friend, biographer, and collaborator in Dante translation, Dr. Barbara Reynolds, from her home in England.

An accomplished scholar in her own right—for 22 years lecturer in Italian at the University of Nottingham, a Dante translator, and general editor of The Cambridge Italian Dictionary—Barbara Reynolds is also the president of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society (with a membership around 500), author of the New York Times notable book Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, and editor of five volumes of Sayers's letters. Dr. Reynolds's 1989 book, The Passionate Intellect: Dorothy L. Sayers' Encounter with Dante, is one of this interviewer's favorite works of intellectual biography.

What was Dorothy L. Sayers like as a person? The portraits of her that I have read leave the impression of a person who was larger than life—even intimidating.

She radiated intellectual ardor. Dante called this "the mind in love"—it was a gift Dorothy possessed all her life. This passionate intellectual energy could sometimes be quite overwhelming. She would come and stay with me, and we would talk and go out to meet people and come back late at night; then she would start on some very difficult point in Dante, such as Ptolemaic astronomy, what the position of the stars might be at a certain point; and this would go until two or three in the morning. I was a great deal younger then; I was 21 years younger than she was, and she was in her 60s. But she was going strong, and her mind was not missing a thing. Perhaps I mislaid a star or two, and she would say, "Where are your wits, woman?"

Exceptional, really. I have never met anybody who compared with her in energy and expanse of mind or breadth of vision. I was amazed at this great tidal wave that flowed over me, and when she had been to stay, I used to go to bed for a couple of days to recover!

One of the best-known creative products that flowed from this "tidal wave" of intellectual energy was her mystery stories, which have never been out of print. What is it about these that still compels and speaks to us today?

Certainly, she told stories masterfully—plotting with care and insisting on the "fair play" rule, by which readers are given enough evidence to solve the mystery by the end of the book. And her main characters, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, are both attractive and interesting figures. They develop and deepen—especially in that later sequence of novels which includes Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, and Gaudy Night. This is partly because Sayers wove the threads of her own experience, thoughts, and feelings into the fabric of their characters. This depth dimension in the characters fascinates readers, and they seek out other stories in the series.

But more important for Sayers than bare story were a number of recurring ethical themes that she wove into her tales. A good example of this is Gaudy Night—one of her best novels. The story involves the dawning awareness on the part of Harriet Vane, an Oxford-trained scholar like Sayers herself, that no relationship can ever be sound that is not founded on the integrity of each party.

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December (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49