Dorothy Leigh Sayers , British essayist, novelist, critic, scholar, and playwright, who made her reputation with the Lord Peter Wimsey detective stories, spent her final years on scholarship and chancel drama. Born in Oxford in 1893, the only child of Helen Leigh Sayers and the Reverend Henry Sayers , a distinguished scholar who served as headmaster for Christ Church Cathedral Choir School, Dorothy L. Sayers inherited her father's love of languages and music. From her maternal ancestor Percival Leigh (a writer for Punch) she inherited her rapier wit. Tutored at home, first in Oxford and later in the fen country, where her father was the parish priest, she mastered Latin, French, and German before she mastered Latin, French, and German before she was into her teens. Her experiences at the Godolphin School in Salisbury, which she attended in 1909-1911, provided her with some early amateur theatrical experience and great personal unhappiness...