“I HAD A DIM NOTION OF WRITING A STORY SOMETHING LIKE THIS...” SAYERS (Dorothy L., 1893-1957, Detective Novelist, Creator of ‘Lord Peter Wimsey’)

Fine Typed Letter signed to Dennis WHEATLEY (1897-1977, Novelist) thanking him for “the copy of MURDER OFF MIAMI, which looks most entertaining. Many years ago I had a dim notion of writing a story something like this, but felt I could not cope with the difficulty of getting all the material together. I congratulate you on having produced this unique volume, which I shall study with great interest. It is very kind of you to invite me to your cocktail party... I do not know whether I shall be able to get up to Town... so may I leave it open...”, 1 side A4, 24 Newland Street, Witham, Essex headed paper, 16th July

In 1935 Sayers published what she intended to be the last Wimsey novel, Gaudy Night, set in Harriet Vane's old Oxford college. There is attempted murder but Wimsey identifies the culprit in time to prevent further harm. At the end of the book Wimsey proposes to Harriet (in Latin) and is accepted (also in Latin). In Oxford in May, and in London in June, Sayers delivered a lecture entitled "Aristotle on Detective Fiction", humorously contending that in his Poetics, Aristotle shows that what he most wished for was a good detective story. The same year Sayers worked on a script for a film to be called The Silent Passenger.

Item Date:  1936

Stock No:  42538      £575

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