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The Imperial Detective: Empire and Englishness in the Detective Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers and P. D. James. Lynette Gaye Field Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in English. Graduate Diploma in English. This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Discipline of English and Cultural Studies. 2011 ii iii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF CONTRIBUTION v ABSTRACT vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE 27 This England CHAPTER TWO 70 At War CHAPTER THREE 110 Imperial Adventures CHAPTER FOUR 151 At Home AFTERWORD 194 WORKS CITED 199 iv v STATEMENT OF CANDIDATE CONTRIBUTION I declare that the thesis is my own composition with all sources acknowledged and my contribution clearly identified. The thesis has been completed during the course of enrolment in this degree at The University of Western Australia and has not previously been accepted for a degree at this or any other institution. This bibliographical style for this thesis is MLA (Parenthetical). vi vii ABSTRACT Dorothy L. Sayers and P. D. James are writers of classical detective fiction whose work is firmly anchored to a recognisably English culture, yet little attention has been given to this aspect of their work. I seek to redress this. Using Simon Gikandi’s concept of “the incomplete project of colonisation” ( Maps of Englishness 9) I argue that within the works of Sayers and James the British Empire informs and complicates notions of Englishness. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey and James’s Adam Dalgliesh share, with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, both detecting expertise and the character of the “imperial detective”. Building on Caroline Reitz’s notion of the “heroic imperial detective” ( Detecting the Nation 78) who appeared in literary works at the end of the nineteenth century, I argue that both Lord Peter Wimsey and Adam Dalgliesh continue this tradition. The appearance of the “imperial detective” is linked to high points of anxiety about the state of the British Empire. Wimsey’s principal detective endeavours date from 1923–1937 while Adam Dalgliesh first appeared in 1962 and his latest case, The Private Patient was published in 2008. Throughout the narratives both detectives endorse and practise a code of behaviour firmly yoked to ideologies of masculine capability current in late nineteenth-century Imperial England, including an ideology of chivalric gentlemanliness. As “imperial detectives”, Wimsey and Dalgliesh enforce their version of Englishness. They practise imperial domesticity during their detective work, assessing and investigating English homes; they register the cultural and personal distress of both World Wars; they re-create colonial adventures within the shores of England and in so doing they reinforce and create a catalogue of idealised English values. At all times, my thesis seeks to read the figure of the “imperial detective” as a method of negotiating anxieties about a dwindling Empire, during the inter-war years in Wimsey’s case and of the post 1960 era for Dalgliesh. In doing so, I will argue, the detective series, separately and together, form a continuum with late nineteenth-century imperial ideologies, well after that era has drawn to a close. viii ix ACKNOWLEDEGMENTS To Winthrop Professor Brenda Walker I offer my sincere thanks for her enthusiasm and for her mentoring throughout what was, in the end, a very long project. Professor Judith Johnston has given generously of her time, knowledge and unique nurturing, which I value greatly. Associate Professor Kieran Dolin’s calm, incisive reading of my work has been invaluable. Professor Michael Levine has always provided helpful advice and assistance. The English Department at The University of Western Australia have supported me throughout. Associate Professor Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Professor Van Ikin, Professor Andrew Lynch and Associate Professor Delys Bird have all assisted and encouraged me along the way. The collegial and inclusive environment of the department made my postgraduate experience a truly special one. To The University of Western Australia I offer my sincere gratitude in awarding me an Australian Postgraduate Award. I also thank the University for providing a Postgraduate Travel Award which allowed me to carry out research into the P. D. James manuscript collection at Girton College, Cambridge. Kate Perry, the archivist at Girton was generous with her assistance. To the Nineteenth-Century group, especially Monica Anderson and Delphine McFarlane, thank you for your wisdom and friendship. Kelly Shepherd, Juliet Wege, Margo Darbyshire and Michele Blacklock were friends who wanted to listen. Andrew Blacklock and Tracey Lewis generously read the final drafts. Thank you. Thank you to my parents Heather and Kevin Jones for giving me the love of learning. To Nigel, Toby and Bea Field, you are the reason for completing this project, it is your love that got me through to the end. x 1 INTRODUCTION “England with all thy faults, I love thee still.” Dorothy. L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors (235) “Most of us, whatever our discontents, know that we are exceptionally privileged to be citizens of this United Kingdom.” P. D. James, “Address to the BBC Governors” (241) Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) and P. D. James (1920-) are writers of detective fiction whose work is firmly anchored to a recognisably English culture, yet little critical attention has been paid to the question of Englishness within their work. Indeed, in James’s case, as Louise Harrington has noted, surprisingly little critical attention of any kind has been devoted to her writing (495). Yet the contribution of both authors to the genre of detective fiction is substantial in both fictional and critical terms. Sayers, between 1923 and 1937, published twelve novels, eleven of which feature her aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey. 1 She also wrote numerous short stories, many of which feature Wimsey, but also include a variety of “non-Wimsey” tales. In addition Sayers wrote a number of critical works, of which her 1928 introductory essay to The Omnibus of Crime is most notable. 2 P. D. James, whose first novel Cover Her Face was published in 1962, has written eighteen novels to date, fourteen of which feature the introspective policeman, Adam Dalgliesh, the most recent being The Private Patient in 2008. The Maul and the Pear Tree (1971), written with T. A. Critchley, is James’s examination of the 1811 Ratcliffe Highway murders. In 2009 James published her second non-fiction work, Talking about Detective Fiction which presents her views on the genre. The literary connection between Sayers and James is profound in their formation of an understanding of Englishness and, in particular, in their creation of a detective who imbues and enacts an idealised form of an English identity which is acutely concerned with the imperial position of England. Both Sayers and James work within the conventions of what Charles Rzepka terms “classic” or “analytic” stories of detection (Detective Fiction 13).3 Sayers and James are both alumni of the Detection Club, the association of crime writers whose 1 The “non-Wimsey” book is the epistolary novel The Documents in the Case , published in 1930. 2 This collection was also published under the title Great Stories of Mystery, Detection, and Horror . 3 The terms “classic” and “classical” are seemingly interchangeable in criticism of detective fiction. For the sake of consistency I will use the term “classical” throughout. 2 members first devised a mock serious charter of rules for detective fiction.4 Sayers, a founding member, also served as President of the Detection Club from 1949 until her death in 1957. Both authors take seriously the “rules” of classical detective fiction, a form which reached its peak during the “Golden Age”, a period described by Rzepka as the “glory days of rule-bound literary detection” (13). 5 Sally Munt locates the “Golden Age” as the span between the first Agatha Christie novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles , in 1920 and the final novel by Dorothy Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon in 1937 (7).6 David Glover extends the chronology from 1913-36, but also posits Sayers as a major figure within this time (36). The “Golden Age” detective novels and short stories feature a detective who is well bred or well-connected socially and carries out his or her investigations within a closed community. The rural village, country manor, private club, university or similarly stratified society is temporarily disrupted by murder until the intelligent and tactful sleuth restores order. The detective interrogates not only the suspects, but the details of their English, often rural, lives creating a narrative of Englishness. W. H. Auden, in his 1948 essay “The Guilty Vicarage,” after admitting his addiction to the classical detective story, states that he finds it difficult, “to read one that is not set in rural England” (146). This association of classical detective fiction with English identity is the basis of this project. P. D. James, in her discussion of “Golden Age” detection, chooses a quintessentially English poem as a metaphor for a 4 Simon Brett provides a summary of the first seventy-five years of the Detection Club in his introduction to The Detection Collection . The club began in the early 1930s, although, as Brett points out, the exact date is uncertain. The early members of the club included G. K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Agatha Christie and Anthony Berkeley, along with Dorothy Sayers. 5 Critical studies of detective fiction are many and various. Much of the critical attention directed towards Sayers has seen her work read in terms of her later theological scholarship, or through a biographical slant. McGregor and Lewis give an historical reading of her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, in Conundrums for the Long Weekend (2000), but do not read Sayers’s work in the wider context of detective fiction.

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