The Mutual Admiration Society:

 How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women

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By: Mo Moulton
Narrated by: Lorna Bennett
Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
Unabridged Audiobook

Publisher's Summary
A group biography of renowned crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers and the Oxford women who stood at the vanguard of equal rights

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, The Mutual Admiration Society offers crucial insight into Dorothy L. Sayers and her world.

©2019 Mo Moulton (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

 

How we slowly but surely move the world forward

You have me waxing philosophic this evening.

It is not the headlines that count. It is the slow, drip, drip, drip of incremental change wrought by individuals day after day, year after year that moves us forward -- toward enlightenment, toward societal change, toward whatever it is out there that we are trying to change about the world we live in.

Before there was Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, The Feminine Mystique and a whole lot of Playtex going up in smoke, there were Ms. Sayers and her Oxford buddies -- the generation that would have literally given birth to the Bellas, the Glorias and the Bettys. Moulton has put together a very readable biography of a remarkable group of intelligent, motivated women who in their own mostly quiet ways moved us forward.

If you are interested in Sayers and her life story, this is a good place to start. If you can, eyeball the book, because the audiobook narrator's habit of taking a v-e-r-y long paused before every bit of quoted text will drive you crazy -- along with her attempts to give each of the women their own voice, which, to me, in a non-fiction recitation is not necessary.