It’s the birthday of author and scholar Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957), best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.

Sayers was born at Oxford in Oxfordshire, England, the daughter of an Anglican rector. (Rector? Damn near killed her. I’m sorry. I need to stop doing that. That is the last time. Very probably.) She was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Oxford (1915), where she received first honors in medieval literature. She worked as a copywriter in a London advertising firm but at the same time began publishing her Lord Peter mysteries, beginning in 1923 with Whose Body? In 1924, Sayers gave birth to a son, John Anthony, out of wedlock, which event she hid from all her friends and family except for the cousin who raised him; throughout his life, she supported him financially and called him her nephew. Two years later she married Captain Atherton Fleming, possibly unhappily; he had a temper and soon became an invalid.

In 1937, Sayers wrote a play, The Zeal of Thy House, for a festival at Canterbury Cathedral, and while doing so experienced a surge of interest in the Christian faith; the play, among other things, put forth the concept that human creativity reflects the image of God and that creativity itself is Trinitarian. The play continued running post-festival in London’s West End. In 1940, Sayers began work on a series of radio plays retelling the gospel (later printed as the collection The Man Born to Be King, 1943), which was wildly controversial among Christians for having Jesus and his disciples speak in colloquial language and even slang. (Gasp.) But Sayers’ friend C.S. Lewis was so moved by these plays that he read them every year during Lent. Among her other significant religious works is  the nonfiction book The Mind of the Maker (1941), which again explores human creation and the Trinity.

Sayers had intended to wrap up Lord Peter with the novel Gaudy Night (1935), but in 1936 came out with the drama Busman’s Honeymoon, released the next year in book form. In it, Lord Peter finally marries mystery writer Harriet Vane (thought by some critics to be a stand-in for the author) and the honeymoon starts with a body in the cellar, as all good honeymoons do. (I haven’t read it but notice that it receives a roaringly popular 4.28 stars from over 14,000 readers on Goodreads. That’s up there with Harry Potter, for crying out loud.)

Sayers died on December 17th of heart failure, at which point it was revealed that John Anthony was her son and sole beneficiary. (NB: If some well-heeled person out there wants to claim me as their sole beneficiary, I am okay with that. PM me.)

Enjoy whatever nature dishes up today in the way of sunshine or thunder and stay scrupulously honest to the data.