Happy birthday, Dorothy L. Sayers

It is the birthday of English mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893), who created the bon vivant amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey. The multi-talented sleuth was first featured in Whose Body (1923) and stars in a dozen novels and numerous short stories. Wimsey is an authority on incunabula (even wrote a book about it—Notes on the Collecting of Incunabula), on wine, classical music, and luxury cars (he owns a 12-cylinder, 1927 Daimler Corsica coupe convertible.) He calls all his cars Mrs. Merdle, after a Charles Dickens character who hated fuss. Literary references abound thought the Wimsey novels, to the delight of fans. Sayers also wrote poetry, religious essays, and plays. She considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work.