Mutual Admiration Society

In Mutual Admiration Society Royal Historical Society fellow Mo Moulton relates the remarkable friendship of renowned crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers and five other women at the vanguard of equal rights, who were among the first to receive full degrees from Oxford University.

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'An enjoyable anthem to friendship' Hephzibah Anderson, Observer

'Hugely enjoyable . . . Modern-day readers can thank the ambitious, complicated, funny, brave women of the Mutual Admiration Society' Anna Carey, Sunday Business Post

'A tribute to that precious but still unsung thing: the loving bond between female friends, based on intellectual exchange and deep affection' Charlotte Higgins, Guardian

Winner of the Agatha Award for best nonfiction 2020

Dorothy L. Sayers is now famous for her Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane detective series, but she was equally well known during her life for an essay asking 'Are Women Human?' Women's rights were expanding rapidly during Sayers's lifetime; she and her friends were some of the first women to receive degrees from Oxford. Yet, as historian Mo Moulton reveals, it was clear from the many professional and personal obstacles they faced that society was not ready to concede that women were indeed fully human.

Dubbing themselves the Mutual Admiration Society, Sayers and her classmates remained lifelong friends and collaborators as they fought for a truly democratic culture that acknowledged their equal humanity. A celebration of feminism and female friendship, Mutual Admiration Society offers crucial insight into Dorothy L. Sayers and her world.