A Scottish-Canadian Blethering On About Books

This is the third, last, and most recent of the three biographies of Dorothy Sayers I acquired to read in order to have a solid framework in which to enjoy perusal of her letters. First published in 1992, it's more concise and more sympathetic than Brabazon's opus (Coomes calls Brabazon "magisterial", which I think is wonderfully apt, though you have to think about it a bit). Things I enjoyed about this biography: lengthy but highly appropriate quotations from Sayers' own writings; nice little photo section; no apparent axes to grind on the author's part; solid apparatus (selective bibliography; good notes; index). Thing I regretted about this biography: the Wimsey years and discussion of the mystery novels were pretty much crushed into one chapter. Coomes may feel that since they were crushed into one chapter of Sayers' actual life, that's appropriate, but folks like me are coming at this biography from pretty much one direction - the mysteries - so I think a biographer could afford to err on the side of expansiveness when discussing them. However, I'm not disposed to belabour this point; perhaps if I dig out my copy of Hone's Literary Biography I'll find that Hone did everything that needed doing on that front. It's been decades since I read that one.

Anyway, thanks to all this biography-reading, I feel as if I know Dorothy Leigh Sayers about as well as anybody could who didn't have the good fortune to cross paths with her in life, and I thank Mr. Coomes for his gentle, unsensational, even-tempered recounting of the story.