THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY: HOW DOROTHY L. SAYERS AND HER OXFORD CIRCLE REMADE THE WORLD FOR WOMEN. Mo Moulton. New York: Basic Books, November 2019. ix + 372 pages. ISBN: 9781541644472 (hardcover); 9781541644465 (ebook). 22.48 [pounds sterling] RRP. $30.00 USA.

WHEN CONSIDERING THE LIFE OF AUTHOR DOROTHY L. SAYERS, her readers and critics often define Sayers in terms of her written work, as detective novelist, short story writer, Christian apologist, translator, critic, essayist, poet, or playwright. Rarely is the person of Sayers considered, not in relation to her published writings, but as part of a larger movement, through her life experiences, affected by, and affecting, the lives of others in a web of linkages, or as a female of endeavor (Heilbrun 2) participating in a transitioning culture within the volatile timeframe of early to mid-twentieth century Britain.

Without exception, Sayers's biographers, (1) remaining true to biography protocol, place Sayers squarely in the center of the story, with others maneuvering around her only as they are acknowledged or evidenced to be relevant in her life. As a result, biographies of Sayers tend to shepherd the reader toward a singularly focused consideration of her, peppered with optional extras in the form of written detail: factual, creative, or whimsical.

Historian Mo Moulton, on the other hand, takes a unique perspective and a variant approach to the personal history of Dorothy L. Sayers. Moulton lifts Sayers out of the center of the story and moves her into a participant role within something greater than herself: a circle of women. However, they are not just a random circle of women, but a synchronistically gathered set of intellectually strong young Oxford students motivated by their idealistic determination to share an academic world which ostensibly welcomes them yet, pointedly, and due solely to their gender, denies their right to full membership in the university community.

Within this early twentieth-century Oxford University environment, comprising, equally, new opportunities and closed doors, in 1912 several Somerville College students formed a literary and socially nurturing community within their college titled The Mutual Admiration Society. (2) The Society remained active not only through the Oxford life of its members but extended an influence throughout the professional and personal lives of several participants, Sayers among them.

Although the Mutual Admiration Society included six to twelve (or more) Somerville students at any one time during the course of its existence, Moulton has chosen to focus upon a subset of the society comprising those early participants who maintained an enduring relationship, moving in and out of each other's lives for decades. In effect, this is the intertwined story, almost a collective history, of four MAS women: Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Charis Ursula (Barnett) Frankenburg, Dorothea (Dorothy) Ellen Hanbury Rowe, and Dorothy Leigh Sayers, as they wove through one another's personal and professional lives within a web of long-term friendship begun through the MAS at the University of Oxford.

The overall structure of The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade...