The Letters of Dorothy L.Sayers: 1944-1950 Vol 3 (Hardcover)

Synopsis
The year 1944 was a turning point in the creative life of Dorothy L. Sayers: she began to read Dante. Her letters to Charles Williams conveying her first excitement so amazed him that he planned to publish them, but died before he could do so. After 50 years they can be read here at last, as fresh and vigorous as the day they were written. Her translation of Dante's "Inferno" appeared in 1949 and 50,000 copies were sold at once. In the half century since then, the three volumes of her translation have reached sales of over a million and a quarter. Her letters reveal the creative energy which powered this achievement. Other letters take the reader behind the scenes of her new drama "The Just Vengeance", produced in Lichfield Cathedral in 1946, and of the revival of "The Zeal of Thy House" in Canterbury Cathedral in 1949. Colour plates and photographs of the costumes designed by Norah Lambourne are included, as well as diagrams of Dante's "Inferno" by Wilfred Scott-Giles and original drawings by Sayers herself. These are the concluding years of the war, the period of guided missiles, continuing domestic hardship and the austerities of peace.

Her son marries and gets divorced, her husband falls ill, requiring constant vigilance, and dies. Despite many conflicting demands, Sayers' creative output remains phenomenal, not least the vast number of stimulating, amusing, sometimes exasperated but always immensely readable letters.

About the Author
An Italian scholar and translator, Barbara Reynolds completed the translation of Dante's Divine Comedy which Dorothy L. Sayers left unfinished when she died. Dr Reynolds has told the story of this collaboration in The Passionate Intellect: Dorothy L. Sayers' Encounter with Dante. She has also translated Dante's La Vita Nuova and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and was the general editor of The Cambridge Italian Dictionary. More recently, Dr Reynolds founded the journal Seven, to which she has contributed articles on Dorothy L. Sayers. She is the President of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, and has frequently lectured at the society's conferences. She is currently working on an edition of the Sayers letters, of which the first three volumes have now appeared. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.