Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?

Ann Martin (University of Saskatchewan)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Birmingham Newman University), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1923

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Crime and Detective
Novel

Resources

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Whose Body?

is Dorothy Leigh Sayers’s first novel as well as the first of eleven that would feature the amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Sayers had finished the manuscript in November 1921. After rejections from other houses, it was published in 1923 by Boni and Liveright of New York and by T. Fisher Unwin of London. It was also serialized by

People’s Magazine

. The novel met with favourable reviews and “encouraging enough” sales (Hitchman 62), and was republished first in 1925, marking Sayers’s rise to fame as a detective fiction writer.

While Sayers had begun her writing career by publishing rather conventional poetry in the volumes Op.1 (1916) and Catholic Tales and Christian Songs (1919), she would be best known for her novels and short stories from the 1920s and 1930s,

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2782 words

Citation: Martin, Ann. "Whose Body?". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 September 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8781, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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