I’m a long time fan of Dorothy L Sayers’ work and yet I know very little about her life. That was what attracted me to this book. It’s the story not only of DLS, but of how she and her small group of talented and high-achieving university friends — all of them pioneers in the early days of women students at Oxford University — developed in the period between the wars.

Author Mo Moulton doesn’t allow Sayers to dominate but gives us the story of the young women who, in 1912, formed what they termed the Mutual Admiration Society — DLS herself, Muriel St Clare Byrne, Charis Frankenburg, Dorothy Rowe and others. Through them she conveys a flavour of a complicated social world between the Wars. Everything was changing and attitudes to women, it seems, in particular. There was a shortage of men and so not all of them married, breaking the moulds of relationships and going on to eminence in their various professions. 

It’s a complicated book, weaving together many strands of social history and tying them, in a particularly satisfying way, into the lives of these women to make the interwar world accessible to the modern reader. Moulton seems to get the heart of all her subjects and the research is thorough — though perhaps I felt there was sometimes too much detail (for example, in some of the letters or the minutiae of their academic or professional work) which rather slowed the narrative down.

that said, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read a lot about this period and this book gives a real insight into the ever-changing world that was the legacy of the great War. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Perseus Books and Netgalley for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I thought that I would enjoy this but I found it too long and detailed, unfortunately. The only one who I was really interested in reading about was Dorothy L. Sayers.

I received this free ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

A fascinating account of a group of early twentieth century women who made it to Oxford, and who, because there was no clear and easy path into academia beyond it for women then, made very different lives for themselves from there. I was interested because I am a Sayers scholar, and therefore have read a great deal of biography on Sayers, and her letters, published and not, and her papers. I have always passed over these women who were her circle - interested in them only for what the letters said about Sayers herself. Moulton gives them back their lives and their focus, and they are each of them interesting on their own terms.

This book comes with the strap line “How Dorothy Sayers and her circle made the world for women”. So what was the Mutual Admiration Society? In 1912 a new group of women entered Somerville College, Oxford – well in advance of the University issuing degrees to women. As a women’s residential college the students were taught by women academics, but were allowed to attend lectures elsewhere in the University. The standards were generally high and entrance was restricted to essentially more privileged women who could afford the lifestyle (albeit with some receiving scholarships). With war breaking out in the summer of 1914, not all would go on to complete their degrees at this stage – some were deeply interested in academic study but (as women) would inevitably find secure employment in the field either difficult or impossible. The Mutual Admiration Society (self named) was a group of students who met up regularly to encourage and discuss their own writing across genres. Moulton tells us this was a place they created to grow beyond the structures of “normal” life for Edwardian women. And help them become complex and creative adults.
Even in the university years the group would change and evolve, but Moulton concentrates on 4 women – with reference to a slightly wider group – and follows them through their lives – the last not dying until the 1980s. She uses archives of their professional lives and rare private papers – admitting that these were often deliberately destroyed - to build a picture of them individually or collectively. Dorothy Sayers is the best known – using her crime novels to give her financial security – but with interest in historical and then spiritual matters, D Rowe taught in a girls school for 40 years in Bournemouth for her living, but built and managed the amateur theatre there, one of the most important in Britain, Charlotte Frankenburg married early. Running her family she also sat on a slew of charities and committees in the North West. She would write on child rearing across the years, but was interested in maternal mortality, child birth, education and other issues. Muriel St Claire Byrne was interested in medieval history and would eventually publish the Lisle papers – but was a lecturer and writer on popular history books before that. The text reflects on aspects of their private lives – married, unmarried, unmarried relationships, an illegitimate child and gay relationships both permanent and more flighty.
This means that this should be a very interesting book – with these different, intellectual or creative and vibrant women. Women growing through the biggest political changes for all women. This against a back drop of two world wars and the intervening recessions. This placed severe financial and/or emotional trauma on so many. I found it dry and hard to read. Why? First it was presented in chapter order by date - and then in the text this fell apart as Moulton followed thought lines. This led to an imbalance in what was put where – with some chapters filled with letter texts or similar that often seemed irrelevant to the place. But the overall impression was of a series of academic articles or talks crudely patched together and in need of an overall and serious edit.
The other difficulty is that Moulton admits that the women were privileged and that if they were men what they achieved would be close to normal, not far past mediocrity. So the lack of clear focus on why they are so important to her hypothesis needed to be presented in a more coherent way. Set against the political development s and social change that they were benefitting from would have been the economic fallout from the First War and its massive death toll – that is barely considered in detail. This shaky background raised questions in my mind as to the relevance of her other deductions. I think too there might be debate as to why she “cherry picked” four of the original group when a broader look might have given a different slant to the work and made it more interesting too.
I suspect that this book will catch readers by its title, and maybe introduce readers to women they had little knowledge of previously. So it would just be a “starter”. For serious ideas about either the women themselves or the developing political background readers will have to go elsewhere. If it was being used as a discussion of lesbian lifestyle in a political or personal context at this time it would have to be regarded as very weak. Overall I would describe the whole book as disappointing.

I don't read a great deal of non-fiction, but every so often I need some as a bit of a palate cleanser between books - usually I turn to something historical at this kind of time, then this caught my eye because of its subtitle. I've been a massive Dorothy L Sayers fan for many year and didn't really know much about her other than the Wimsey books, so it seemed like a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

DLS, as she is called all the way through The Mutual Admiration Society, is the most well-known of the group of women who this book is about but also possibly the most difficult to understand. These are women who first met at Somerville College in Oxford, arriving there at a time when the university was grudgingly accepting women as students (with many criteria for how they should then behave) but not to the point of actually giving them a degree at the end of their studies. Being self-selecting, these are predominantly middle class women who have the luxury of pursuing their interests even though very few options will be available at the end of their studies: pretty much the choice is teaching or marriage and most of them go through both at some point in their lives.

The book does the best it can with the difficulties posed by people's desire not to have their private lives talked about after their death, as at least one member of the MAS requested that her private papers be burned. At least one was engaged in a same-sex relationship and there was also some polyamory going on too, though the book rightly states that sticking current labels on previous generations' behaviour is always tricky and problematic.

In the end, I think it was still DLS who remained the focus of the book for me. I had little idea of the influence of her life on the characters she wrote, so to some extent that was interesting to see. I remain unconvinced of the accuracy of the subtitle of this book: the only one of their number who possibly had the effect suggested on others was heavily involved in public health matters, especially about women and birth control. Beyond that, did the others actually affect women's everyday life to the extent this subtitle suggests?