Later, she would be equally well known for the essays and plays she wrote to expound her particular understanding of Christianity and personal ethics. She would gain fame in adulthood as the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristocratic detective who starred in her mystery novels. Serious and a little weird, DLS was absorbed in her study of French literature and fascinated by the Middle Ages and religion. Sayers was known to her friends by her initials, DLS. They fell apart and came together again, over the course of decades and remarkable careers that ranged from birth control advocacy to genre fiction, from classrooms to the stage.įour members of the Mutual Admiration Society (MAS) are at the heart of this story. They were critical, and they were at odds. But they were the exact opposite of the simple echo chamber of praise that the name could imply, in its pejorative sense. They were willing to be relentless and did not insist on being liked, crucial qualities for taking advantage of the real but tenuous space they had to work within. They supported each other boldly and emphatically: no false modesty or feminine shame here. The name both captures the spirit of the group and misrepresents it. Let’s call ourselves the Mutual Admiration Society, she suggested, because that’s what people will call us anyway. Sayers, who would go on to be a famous detective novelist and popular theologian. The group was named by its best-known member, Dorothy L. In the firelight, over economical treats, they created a space in which they could grow beyond the limitations of Edwardian girlhood and become complex, creative adults with a radically capacious notion of what it might mean to be both human and female.
One evening in November 1912, some new friends, all first-year students, gathered “to read aloud our literary efforts and to receive and deliver criticism.” They brought stories, poems, essays, plays, and fables, and they received far more than merely criticism. I T BEGAN IN A QUIET sort of way, over hot cocoa and toasted marshmallows in a student room at Somerville College, Oxford.
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