Current PhD Students

Sam Sheppard

Thesis Title:

“The knowledge of good and evil”: Religion, War, and the Law in Dorothy Sayers’ Detective Fiction

Supervisors:

Dr Bryan Radley

Description:

My doctoral research is concerned with the work of Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), an English writer and theologian who created the aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. I will place the eleven Wimsey novels published between 1923 and 1937 in conversation with a range of interwar texts, investigating the distinctive treatment of legal, martial, and religious topics in Sayers’ detective fiction. In particular, I will examine the portrayal of the after-effects of the First World War, especially the treatment of returning soldiers, and the ethico-legal quandaries raised by the pursuit and identification of criminals.

I am intrigued by the effect that nineteenth-century precursors such as Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) and Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) had upon Sayers’ writing, and I will closely interrogate her stated belief that the detective story must “become once more a novel of manners instead of a pure crossword puzzle”.

My wider interests encompass Victorian and twentieth-century literature. I have an abiding interest in the depiction of transport technology in novels of these periods; my Master’s project focused on the representation of railways and rail travel in mid-twentieth-century genre fiction, for example. I hold a BA in English from the University of Oxford and an MA in English (by research) from the University of York.