Detecting Wimsey: Papers on Dorothy L. Sayers's Detective Fiction

by Nancy-Lou Patterson

edited by Emily E. Auger and Janet Brennan Croft

First published 2017. Second printing 2020 (with minor corrections)

Table of Contents

About the Author

Abbreviations for Dorothy L. Sayers's Fiction

Introduction: Nancy-Lou Patterson's Wimsical Scholarship by Janet Brennan Croft

Editorial Notes

Transformations and Transgressions (with illustrations by Nancy-Lou Patterson)

1. "All Nerves and Nose": Lord Peter Wimsey as Wounded Healer in the Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers

2. "Changing, Fearfully Changing": Polarization and Transformation in Dorothy L. Sayers's Strong Poison

3. "Bloody Farce": Irony, Farce, and Mortality in Dorothy L. Sayers's Have His Carcase

4. "A Comedy of Masks": Lord Peter as Harlequin in Dorothy L. Sayers's Murder Must Advertise (with illustrations by Nancy-Lou Patterson)

5. "A Ring of Good Bells": Providence and Judgment in Dorothy L. Sayers's The Nine Tailors

6. "Beneath That Ancient Roof": The House as Symbol in Dorothy L. Sayers's Busman's Honeymoon (with illustrations by Nancy-Lou Patterson)

7. "Eve's Sharp Apple": Five Transgressing Women in the Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers

8. "The Perilous Synthesis": Sacred and Profane Love in Dorothy L. Sayers's Thrones, Dominations

Reflections (with illustration by Nancy-Lou Patterson)

9. Even the Parrot Knows Better Than to Eat the Peel: Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) Writes for Children

10. "A Bloomsbury Blue-Stocking": Dorothy L. Sayers's Bloomsbury Years in Their Spatial and Temporal Context

11. Images of Judaism and Anti-Semitism in the Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers

12. "Cat o' Mary": The Spirituality of Dorothy L. Sayers

13. Why We Honor the Centenary of Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957)

Bibliography

Appendix: A Supplemental List of Works By and About Dorothy L. Sayers by Janet Brennan Croft

"Dorothy L. Sayers" Illustration by Nancy-Lou Patterson (1993)

Index

Nancy-Lou Patterson taught at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, from 1962 until she retired in 1992. The University of Waterloo named her a Distinguished Professor Emerita and Wilfrid Laurier University awarded her an honorary doctor of letters. Patterson taught art history and was an active artist, poet, and fiction writer. She was also an enthusiastic conference participant and scholar, who published extensively on the Inklings and other fiction authors, including Dorothy L. Sayers. Patterson's papers about Sayers's work, some previously published in journals such as Mythlore, and some published here for the first time, are gathered in Detecting Wimsey.