Dorothy L. Sayers

Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers . Vane, a mystery writer, initially meets Lord Peter Wimsey when she is on trial for poisoning her lover — he falls in love with her and proposes marriage but she refuses... to begin a relationship with him, traumatised as she is by her dead lover's treatment of her and her recent ordeal. In Have His Carcase she collaborates with Wimsey to solve a murder but still finds Wimsey to be overbearing and superficial. She eventually returns his love and marries him . Harriet Vane is the daughter of a country doctor. She takes a First in English at the fictional Shrewsbury College, Oxford . Her parents both die while she is quite young and she is left to make her own fortune at the age of twenty-three. She has some success as a writer of detective stories, living and socialising with other artists in Bloomsbury.
more

Thomas Traherne, MA was an English poet and religious writer. His style is often considered Metaphysical. He was born in Hereford, son of a shoemaker, and educated at Hereford Cathedral School and Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1652, achieving an MA in arts and divinity nine years later. After... receiving his degree in 1656 he took holy orders and worked for ten years as a parish priest in Credenhill, near Hereford. In 1667 he became minister at Teddington and private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to Charles II. He died at Bridgeman's house at Teddington on or about 27 September 1674 and is buried in St Mary's Church under the reading desk. Traherne was an inconsequential literary figure during his life, whose works were unappreciated until long after his death. He led a humble, devout life, largely sheltered from the literary community. Only one of his works, Roman Forgeries , was published in his lifetime.
more

Vera Mary Brittain was a British writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth,... recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism. Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brittain was the daughter of a well-to-do family who owned paper mills in Hanley and Cheddleton. She had an uneventful childhood with her only brother her closest companion. At 18 months her family moved to Macclesfield, Cheshire and when she was 11 they moved again, to Buxton in Derbyshire. From the age of thirteen she attended boarding school at St Monica's, Kingswood in Surrey where her aunt was principal. Studying English Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, she delayed her degree after one year in the summer of 1915 in order to work as a V.A.D. nurse for much of the First World War. Her fiancé Roland Leighton, two other close friends Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, and her brother Edward Brittain MC were all killed during the war. Their letters to each other are documented in the book Letters from a Lost Generation.
more