SAYERS, Dorothy L. (1893-1957). Writer of detective fiction.
Good Autograph Letter Signed to Mr Fairweather, 2 pages 4to (note in another hand at the head, one crease strengthened), 24 Great James Street [Camden], 26 July 1938.
An outspoken statement of her views on religion: she deplores the current preoccupation with individual religious feelings ('...I refuse to pander to that kind of mental sloth...'), emphasises that her own religious beliefs are her own affair ('...All this lazy curiosity about other people's religious feelings is the vice that is sapping Christendom...'), asserts that what the Catholic Church said God was is what is important, certainly not the views of a detective novelist, states that it is important that she should limit her utterances on religion or she would be in danger of becoming 'official' and therefore not listened to, expresses some regret that she had ever published her articles on religion (including 'The Greatest Drama Ever Staged') and insists that she is a 'novelist & playwright, & my business is to present, not to exhort...'
 Dorothy Sayers was a significant populariser of and apologist for Christianity and her The Zeal of Thy House (1937) and The Man Born to Be King (1943) proved to be controversial. It was the 20000-word article in the Sunday Times, 'The Greatest Drama Ever Staged' (mentioned in the present letter), however, that created her reputation as a Christian apologist. As she herself wrote: 'Apparently the spectacle of a middle-aged female detective-novelist admitting publicly that the judicial murder of God might compete in interest with the corpse in the coal-hole was the sensation for which the Christian world was waiting.' One reader said it was the most practicable exposition of 'our religion in plain English' he had heard.
[No: 23859]