Harriet Vane
Encyclopedia
Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British
writer Dorothy L. Sayers
(1893–1957).
Vane, a mystery writer, initially meets Lord Peter Wimsey
when she is on trial for poisoning her lover (Strong Poison
) — 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 (Gaudy Night
) and marries him (Busman's Honeymoon
).
in English at the fictional Shrewsbury College, Oxford
(the location of which is given as the Balliol College Sports Grounds, now partly occupied by a residential annexe, on Holywell Street). 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
. In time she falls for Philip Boyes, a more literary writer (but with fewer sales) who professes not to believe in marriage, and she agrees to live with him without marrying. After a year of this arrangement, Boyes believes that she truly loves him and proposes marriage. Angered by his hypocrisy and aghast at being offered marriage as "a bad-conduct prize", Harriet breaks off the relationship.
Boyes dies soon afterwards of arsenic poisoning — the method Harriet had researched for her new book. She is arrested and tried for murdering Boyes. Wimsey comes to her rescue by proving who really poisoned Boyes.
After Harriet is acquitted, she remains quite notorious. Sales of her books sky-rocket. Wimsey continues to pursue her romantically, but Harriet repeatedly declines marriage on the principle that gratitude is not a good basis for marriage. She decides to take a walking tour to relax, during which she stumbles over a corpse on a beach, adding to her notoriety. The press is naturally interested; Wimsey hastens to the scene, after receiving a tip from a journalist friend, to help shield Harriet from suspicion. The two investigate the death (when they are not romantically sparring) and unmask the murderer.
A few years later, in 1935, Harriet returns to Oxford for a reunion (or Gaudy
) and is asked to investigate some strange occurrences at her old college. She protests that she is not a sleuth, and recommends that the college hire professional detectives. However, failing to reach either Miss Climpson, at the female detective agency set up by Wimsey, or Wimsey himself, she agrees to assist the college. Her cover is research into Sheridan Le Fanu
, an Anglo-Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels of the 19th century. (In Thrones, Dominations
, the Author's Note states that Vane published a monograph on Sheridan Le Fanu in 1946.) After months of data gathering but with no resolution in sight, Harriet turns once again to Wimsey for help. By the end of the book the villain has been unmasked and Harriet has finally accepted Wimsey's proposal.
The press is delighted to have a woman once accused of murder engaged to a duke's son, and happily publicises the fact. Wimsey and Vane have a small wedding in Oxford with no notice to the press, and escape to their new country residence, Talboys, a Tudor farmhouse in North Hertfordshire
which Harriet had admired as a child and which Peter had given her as a wedding present. The body of the former owner is discovered in the cellar, leading them to investigate.
Thrones, Dominations
, a novel abandoned by Sayers
and finished by Jill Paton Walsh
, is set in and around London, shortly after they return from their honeymoon.
The first of their children is born in the story "The Haunted Policeman".
By the time of the short story "Talboys", they have three sons: Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey (born in October 1936), Roger Wimsey (born 1938), and Paul Wimsey (born 1940). Chronologically between the two are "The Wimsey Papers", a series of epistolary articles written at the beginning of World War II
, which Sayers wrote for The Spectator. Jill Paton Walsh referenced "The Wimsey Papers" in writing A Presumption of Death
, set at the beginning of the Second World War, in which Harriet takes a leading role. Sayers told friends orally that Harriet and Peter Wimsey were to have five children in all, though she did not disclose the names and sexes of the two youngest children.
Sayers was among the first generation of women to receive an Oxford education, ending with a first-class honours in 1915 and graduating in 1920 as an MA. She gave Harriet Vane, too, an Oxford education. Vane's relationship with Boyes has many similarities with Sayers' love affair (1921–1922) with the author John Cournos
(1881–1966), a Russian-born American Jew.
Biographers note that Sayers' later relationship with Bill White and her marriage to the fellow writer Oswald Atherton "Mac" Fleming provide grist for Vane's struggle to balance love (and perhaps marriage to Wimsey) and her work. After Sayers' affairs with Cournos and White were revealed, the comparisons between Sayers and Vane became more emphatic. (Neither of these affairs was publicly known during Sayers' lifetime.)
McGregor and Lewis suggest that some of Vane's and Wimsey's observations about mystery in story versus real life — though in the context of a mystery story — reflect Sayers' sense of fun and ability to laugh with her characters.
in the 1987 BBC
television adaptations of Strong Poison, Have his Carcase and Gaudy Night.
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
writer Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
(1893–1957).
Vane, a mystery writer, initially meets Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a bon vivant amateur sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries; usually, but not always, murders...
when she is on trial for poisoning her lover (Strong Poison
Strong Poison
Strong Poison is a 1929 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.-Plot introduction:It is in Strong Poison that Lord Peter first meets Harriet Vane, an author of police fiction. The immediate problem is that she is on trial for her life, charged with murdering her former...
) — 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
Have His Carcase
Have His Carcase is a 1932 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her seventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and her second novel in which Harriet Vane appears...
she collaborates with Wimsey to solve a murder but still finds Wimsey to be overbearing and superficial. She eventually returns his love (Gaudy Night
Gaudy Night
Gaudy Night is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth in her popular series about aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third featuring crime writer Harriet Vane....
) and marries him (Busman's Honeymoon
Busman's Honeymoon
Busman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It is the fourth and last novel to feature Harriet Vane.-Plot introduction:...
).
Character biography
Harriet Vane is the daughter of a country doctor. She takes a FirstBritish undergraduate degree classification
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...
in English at the fictional Shrewsbury College, Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
(the location of which is given as the Balliol College Sports Grounds, now partly occupied by a residential annexe, on Holywell Street). 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
Bloomsbury
-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...
. In time she falls for Philip Boyes, a more literary writer (but with fewer sales) who professes not to believe in marriage, and she agrees to live with him without marrying. After a year of this arrangement, Boyes believes that she truly loves him and proposes marriage. Angered by his hypocrisy and aghast at being offered marriage as "a bad-conduct prize", Harriet breaks off the relationship.
Boyes dies soon afterwards of arsenic poisoning — the method Harriet had researched for her new book. She is arrested and tried for murdering Boyes. Wimsey comes to her rescue by proving who really poisoned Boyes.
After Harriet is acquitted, she remains quite notorious. Sales of her books sky-rocket. Wimsey continues to pursue her romantically, but Harriet repeatedly declines marriage on the principle that gratitude is not a good basis for marriage. She decides to take a walking tour to relax, during which she stumbles over a corpse on a beach, adding to her notoriety. The press is naturally interested; Wimsey hastens to the scene, after receiving a tip from a journalist friend, to help shield Harriet from suspicion. The two investigate the death (when they are not romantically sparring) and unmask the murderer.
A few years later, in 1935, Harriet returns to Oxford for a reunion (or Gaudy
Gaudy
Gaudy or gaudie is a term used to reflect student life in a number of the ancient universities in the United Kingdom...
) and is asked to investigate some strange occurrences at her old college. She protests that she is not a sleuth, and recommends that the college hire professional detectives. However, failing to reach either Miss Climpson, at the female detective agency set up by Wimsey, or Wimsey himself, she agrees to assist the college. Her cover is research into Sheridan Le Fanu
Sheridan Le Fanu
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era....
, an Anglo-Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels of the 19th century. (In Thrones, Dominations
Thrones, Dominations
Thrones, Dominations is a Lord Peter Wimsey murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained as fragments and notes at her death. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998...
, the Author's Note states that Vane published a monograph on Sheridan Le Fanu in 1946.) After months of data gathering but with no resolution in sight, Harriet turns once again to Wimsey for help. By the end of the book the villain has been unmasked and Harriet has finally accepted Wimsey's proposal.
The press is delighted to have a woman once accused of murder engaged to a duke's son, and happily publicises the fact. Wimsey and Vane have a small wedding in Oxford with no notice to the press, and escape to their new country residence, Talboys, a Tudor farmhouse in North Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
which Harriet had admired as a child and which Peter had given her as a wedding present. The body of the former owner is discovered in the cellar, leading them to investigate.
Thrones, Dominations
Thrones, Dominations
Thrones, Dominations is a Lord Peter Wimsey murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained as fragments and notes at her death. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998...
, a novel abandoned by Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
and finished by Jill Paton Walsh
Jill Paton Walsh
Jill Paton Walsh, CBE, FRSL is an English novelist and children's writer.Born as Gillian Bliss and educated at St. Michael's Convent, North Finchley, London, she read English Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford...
, is set in and around London, shortly after they return from their honeymoon.
The first of their children is born in the story "The Haunted Policeman".
By the time of the short story "Talboys", they have three sons: Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey (born in October 1936), Roger Wimsey (born 1938), and Paul Wimsey (born 1940). Chronologically between the two are "The Wimsey Papers", a series of epistolary articles written at the beginning of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, which Sayers wrote for The Spectator. Jill Paton Walsh referenced "The Wimsey Papers" in writing A Presumption of Death
A Presumption of Death
A Presumption of Death is a mystery novel by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on The Wimsey Papers by Dorothy L. Sayers. The Wimsey Papers were a series of articles published by Sayers during World War II, purporting to be letters written between the various Wimseys during the war A Presumption of...
, set at the beginning of the Second World War, in which Harriet takes a leading role. Sayers told friends orally that Harriet and Peter Wimsey were to have five children in all, though she did not disclose the names and sexes of the two youngest children.
Influences
Sayers consciously modelled Vane on herself, although perhaps not as closely as her fans (and even friends) sometimes thought. Some view Vane as a stand-in for the author, although Vane has many more faults than most such characters.Sayers was among the first generation of women to receive an Oxford education, ending with a first-class honours in 1915 and graduating in 1920 as an MA. She gave Harriet Vane, too, an Oxford education. Vane's relationship with Boyes has many similarities with Sayers' love affair (1921–1922) with the author John Cournos
John Cournos
John Cournos , a writer of Russian-Jewish background, was born in the Ukraine, whence his family emigrated when he was aged 10. During the 1910s and 1920s, he lived in Britain, where his literary career started...
(1881–1966), a Russian-born American Jew.
Biographers note that Sayers' later relationship with Bill White and her marriage to the fellow writer Oswald Atherton "Mac" Fleming provide grist for Vane's struggle to balance love (and perhaps marriage to Wimsey) and her work. After Sayers' affairs with Cournos and White were revealed, the comparisons between Sayers and Vane became more emphatic. (Neither of these affairs was publicly known during Sayers' lifetime.)
McGregor and Lewis suggest that some of Vane's and Wimsey's observations about mystery in story versus real life — though in the context of a mystery story — reflect Sayers' sense of fun and ability to laugh with her characters.
Books by Dorothy L. Sayers
- Strong PoisonStrong PoisonStrong Poison is a 1929 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.-Plot introduction:It is in Strong Poison that Lord Peter first meets Harriet Vane, an author of police fiction. The immediate problem is that she is on trial for her life, charged with murdering her former...
(1930) - Have His CarcaseHave His CarcaseHave His Carcase is a 1932 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her seventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and her second novel in which Harriet Vane appears...
(1932) - Gaudy NightGaudy NightGaudy Night is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth in her popular series about aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third featuring crime writer Harriet Vane....
(1936) - Busman's HoneymoonBusman's HoneymoonBusman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It is the fourth and last novel to feature Harriet Vane.-Plot introduction:...
(1937) (As Lady Peter Wimsey) - In the Teeth of the EvidenceIn the Teeth of the EvidenceIn the Teeth of the Evidence is a collection of short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers first published by Victor Gollancz in 1939. .The book's title is taken from the first story in the collection.-Contents:*Lord Peter Wimsey stories:...
(1939) (editions published after 1942 usually add Talboys, the last story Sayers wrote with Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey)
Books by Jill Paton Walsh
- Thrones, DominationsThrones, DominationsThrones, Dominations is a Lord Peter Wimsey murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained as fragments and notes at her death. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998...
(1998) by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh - A Presumption of DeathA Presumption of DeathA Presumption of Death is a mystery novel by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on The Wimsey Papers by Dorothy L. Sayers. The Wimsey Papers were a series of articles published by Sayers during World War II, purporting to be letters written between the various Wimseys during the war A Presumption of...
(2002) by Jill Paton Walsh - The Attenbury EmeraldsThe Attenbury EmeraldsThe Attenbury Emeralds is the third Lord Peter Wimsey detective novel to be written by Jill Paton Walsh. It was published by Hodder & Stoughton in September 2010.Closely following Lord Peter creator Dorothy L...
(2010) by Jill Paton Walsh
Portrayal in film, TV or theatre
Harriet Vane was portrayed by Harriet WalterHarriet Walter
Dame Harriet Mary Walter, DBE is a British actress.-Personal life:She is the niece of renowned British actor Sir Christopher Lee, as the daughter of his elder sister Xandra Lee. On her father's side she is a great-great-great-granddaughter of John Walter, founder of The TimesShe was educated at...
in the 1987 BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television adaptations of Strong Poison, Have his Carcase and Gaudy Night.