Even with the high literary achievement of her Wimsey stories, Dorothy Sayers was uncomfortable with the necessity of writing them in order to achieve financial security and independence, and once she was relieved of economic necessity, she dedicated her writing career to "literature of expression," which she interpreted for herself as religious essays and dramas and translating Dante's
Divina Commedia. The tandem writing careers of Dorothy L. Sayers (as she insisted on being referred to), the detective fictions that spanned the years 1923 to 1937, and the "serious" literature that occupied her until her death in 1957, reflect important aspects of her existence as a woman attempting to lead an independent life in twentieth-century English society. Educated and erudite as she was as a young woman, Sayers nonetheless found herself alone and unemployed, despite a genteel and privileged background, and possibly unemployable in the wake of veterans returning from the Great War and reduced industrial needs. Her first important job was in an advertising agency in London, from which she derived the setting and ambience for her highly successful Murder Must Advertise (1933). The success of the Wimsey novels enabled her to quit her advertising job and devote herself exclusively to writing.
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