Best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey novels, Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford and also completed her Master’s degree there. Although remembered for her fiction she was most proud of her academic work and her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy is still the most-used translation.
Sayers was an original member of The Detection Club, organized by British mystery writers in the 1930s. Surprisingly, she was not a member of the Inklings, formed by J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams to support each other in their fiction writing. (The Inklings included no female members.) (post by Cathy Akers-Jordan)