SAYERS, DOROTHY L. (1893–1957) was a writer whose theology found expression through many literary genres. Sayers began her education in languages at the age of seven when her father, a Church of England clergyman, began teaching her Latin. She gained first-class honors at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1915, and in 1920 was among the first group of women allowed to take their B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oxford. She earned her living as an advertising copywriter while establishing herself as a poet and as a writer of detective fiction, inventing her character Lord Peter Wimsey. Her novel Gaudy Night, published in 1935, is both a detective story and an unabashed defense of academic and intellectual work as undertaken by women, for whom she was a provocative advocate throughout her life. In her detective fiction she explored the emotional cost to Wimsey and others of establishing the...