#lord peter wimsey books

[dickensianenglishbulldog]

Father Brown: Beneath the foolish-seeming exterior there lies an analytical, supremely sympathetic man.

Lord Peter Wimsey: Beneath the foolish-seeming exterior there lies an analytical, supremely sympathetic man. Beneath him there lies another very silly man, except this one reads Donne.

[aceredshirt13]

if there's one thing about classic literary detectives it's that they are not conventionally attractive. doyle told sidney paget to stop drawing holmes so pretty. christie was like "let me introduce you to this short pudgy balding man who is retirement age and i hate him." sayers compares wimsey to maggots on literally the FIRST PAGE

i love it. i love them. stop casting hot people in these roles. we need our detectives to be Charmingly Weird-Looking

[leojurand]

funny thing about me reading all of peter wimsey and adoring it: i don't like mysteries. and this series didn't change my mind! i still didn't care much about the crime-solving in these books. that's not why i read them. i decided to try the series despite the genre because i always saw sayers's name mentioned at the same time as dunnett's, so i had to at least try. and what kept me going was the great writing and peter himself.

sayers had a gift for writing witty dialogue. if i had to think of an author who's on the same level as her when it comes to that, i would struggle. and you kinda need to be a master at writing witty dialogue if you have a main character like peter winsey. peter!! i think, while reading the series and talking about it on twitter, my most common reaction: peter my best friend :). one of the most lovable and maybe the most delightful protagonist i've ever had the pleasure of reading about.

i didn't always feel 100% connected to him. one of the things i dislike about mystery fiction is that (in my opinion) it's very episodic and so there's no overarching plot, and the characterization doesn't really take center stage. ask me about one favourite peter moment from bellona club or nine tailors and i could not tell you.

but the thing about this series is, it does end up having a sort of overarching plot that sees it's main characters grow and change and kinda gets them out of the "mystery of the week" formula that i think can make characterization stagnant. and that's the harriet vane storyline.

i can't tell how much better harriet makes peter (and i don't need to tell you because if you've read it, you know). seeing peter from the outside, or from the inside but in this situation that changes his priorities so much, was so good. their banter, their chemistry, their misunderstanding, the way harriet perceives peter, from her repressed feelings to her protectiveness and unconditional love. all of it makes peter a much more compelling character. not to say he wasn't before, because i adored peter from book 2 onwards. but harriet always brought the best in him.

i could say a million things more, but tl;dr is sayers has become one of my all time favourite authors, i will never forget peter wimsey, and i'm both incredibly happy to have read this series and so sad that it's over. now what :')

[talkingpiffle]

"Either as Captain O'Shea or the vengeful Earl, John Emery was a fine young romantic actor. He had style and eloquence and was completely at ease in costume drama. In July of the same year [1937] I was to see him as Lord Peter Wimsey in Busman's Honeymoon at the Westport County Playhouse in Connecticut. As is the custom in summer theaters, his engagement was for only a week. He'd had but a week of rehearsal, yet he gave a deft and amusing performance. At the time I was living in a rented house on Long Island Sound, ten miles from Westport. It boasted a swimming pool and free liquor. There I held open house for the likes of Anna May Wong, Clifton Webb, Estelle Winwood, Vincent Price, Louisa Carpenter and a lot of other friends, overloaded with leisure.

"I got a sizzling crush on John on seeing his Wimsey. After the performance I went back to see him. Would he care to spend the week end with me? John readily agreed. I found him intelligent, amusing and exceptionally good-looking. He had good manners and seemed a good listener. This last marked him a rare bird in the set in which I traveled.

"But when John asked me to marry him, I looked upon his offer as an impertinence. Wasn't he getting presumptuous on short acquaintance?"

--Tallulah Bankhead on meeting her husband John Emery, from Tallulah: My Autobiography (Ch. 10)

Newlyweds John Emery and Tallulah Bankhead, September 1937 (x)

[oldshrewsburyian]

Do you have a favorite print edition of the wimsey novels? It’s driving me crazy that I can’t find an edition I really like to collect

So, this is where I confess that I have a kind of Velveteen Rabbit approach to my Wimsey novels:

Well-loved! Real! I did have a first edition of the Lord Peter omnibus of short stories once, but it was stolen. I'm not a fan of the HarperCollins but I am unshakeably fond of the unhinged Avon copies I inherited from my dad.

Scenes that give away the plot! Whatever pulpy nonsense that is for the Copper Fingers story!

Now a MASTERPIECE THEATRE PRESENTATION!

I also have these, which I pick up in Blackwell's as occasion offers:

You will perceive that Gaudy Night is already well-loved despite having been in my grubby little hands for a mere 15+ years, unlike the ancestral paperbacks.

More seriously: I like the vintage green Penguin Crime editions, which are affordably collectible.

[ladysnowangel]

Murder Must Advertise + Coffee

[evenaturtleduck]

"Harriet," he said, suddenly, "what do you think about life? I mean, do you find it good on the whole? Worth living?"

(He could, at any rate, trust her not to protest, archly: "That's a nice thing to ask on one's honeymoon!")

She turned to him with a quick readiness, as though here was the opportunity to say something she had been wanting to say for a long time:

"Yes! I've always felt absolutely certain it was good--if only one could get it straightened out. I've hated almost everything that ever happened to me, but I knew all the time it was just things that were wrong, not everything. Even when I felt most awful I never thought of killing myself or wanting to die--only of somehow getting out of the mess and starting again."

"That's rather admirable. With me it's always been the other way round. I can enjoy practically everything that comes along--while it's happening. Only I have to keep on doing things, because, if once I stop, it all seems a lot of rot and I don't care a damn if I go west tomorrow. At least, that's what I should have said. Now--I don't know. I'm beginning to think there may be something in it after all. . . "

Busman's Honeymoon

[thatscarletflycatcher]

People be like "Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane are goals" and then fail to mention that he was like "This woman is now blorbo, and therefore I'm gonna marry her". What an icon.

[timotey]

"Here's a deep, damp ditch on the other side, which I shall now proceed to fall into." A slithering crash proclaimed that he had carried out his intention.

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers

[dickensianenglishbulldog]

[skyriderwednesday]

So inconsistencies in books are all right by me, I've read far too much Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie to really care if an author keeps the details of their works straight or not (the wobbly bits are where the headcanons and fanfics go :D).

Which is to establish that it's absolutely out of love that I find it absolutely hilarious that Harriet ages backwards between her first and second appearances.

Yeah, sorry to bother you Dorothy, but if she's 29 in 1930 she can't possibly be 28 in 1932*--

[leojurand]

i just finished gaudy night and am amazed by the way dorothy sayers was able to pull off a romance that is an instalove for peter and a slowburn for harriet. except it kind of is a slowburn for peter too, because he had to learn the way he was trying to love harriet was selfish and childish. but wow, not only is peter/harriet an amazing couple almost impossible not to root for, they have such a fascinating dynamic that goes beyond the label of 'romance', believable conflict that makes it more complex and compelling, and a female character that can't simply be called love interest because that would be insulting to who she is and her role in the story.

like there's so much to them. and it's all so good. love when authors can actually write!!

[the-forest-library]

Wimseyverse friends, the spirit of your posting came over me when I last entered a used book store. Although I had never consciously considered looking for this book, I knew that if the bookstore had it in stock, I would purchase it. And now, here we are.

[talkingpiffle]

I didn't find any Sayers at the Antiquarian Book Fair this year, but did spot this John Donne first edition that Lord Peter might have wanted for his collection.

[sometimesreading]

Reading on a mostly empty train this evening 💕

[ladysnowangel]

Currently reading Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers