Harriet Vane
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Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer
Dorothy L. Sayers Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between th ...
(1893–1957). Vane, a mystery writer, initially meets
Lord Peter Wimsey Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (later 17th Duke of Denver) is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (and their continuation by Jill Paton Walsh). A dilettante who solves mysteries for ...
while she is on trial for poisoning her lover (''
Strong Poison ''Strong Poison'' is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears. Plot The novel opens with mystery author Harriet Vane on trial for the murder of her forme ...
''). The detective 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'' is a 1932 locked-room mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers, her seventh novel featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the second in which Harriet Vane appears. Plot During a hiking holiday on the South West coast of England, the detecti ...
'', she collaborates with Wimsey to solve a murder but still finds him to be overbearing and superficial. She eventually returns his love (''
Gaudy Night ''Gaudy Night'' (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane. The dons of Harriet Vane's '' alma mater'', the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on Say ...
'') and marries him (''
Busman's Honeymoon ''Busman's Honeymoon'' is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh and last featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and her fourth and last to feature Harriet Vane. Plot introduction Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry and go to spend thei ...
'').


Character biography

Harriet Vane is the only daughter of a country doctor. She was an undergraduate at
Shrewsbury College Shrewsbury College is a further education college located in the Sutton Farm suburb of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. Previously called Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology and, earlier, Shrewsbury Technical College, the college is base ...
,
Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
(based on Sayers' own
Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...
, the location of which is given as the Balliol College Sports Grounds, now partly occupied by a residential annexe, on Holywell Street) and took a
First First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
in English. Her parents both died while she was quite young and she was left to make her own fortune at the age of 23. She has had some success as a writer of detective stories, living and socialising with other artists in
Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...
. She begins a relationship with Philip Boyes, a more literary but far less successful writer 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 skyrocket. Wimsey continues to pursue her romantically, but Harriet repeatedly declines marriage on the principle that gratitude is not a good basis for it. To relax, she takes a walking tour, during which she finds 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 her old Oxford college for a reunion (or
Gaudy Gaudy or gaudie (from the Latin, "gaudium", meaning "enjoyment" or "merry-making") is a term used to reflect student life in a number of the ancient universities in the United Kingdom as well as other institutions such as Durham University and ...
) and is later asked to investigate some strange occurrences there. She protests that she is not a sleuth, and recommends that the college hire professional detectives. However, failing to reach either
Miss Climpson Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson is a minor character in the Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. She appears in two novels: ''Unnatural Death (novel), Unnatural Death'' (1927) and ''Strong Poison'' (1930), and is mentioned in ''Gaudy N ...
, 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 ''Thrones, Dominations'' is a Lord Peter Wimsey– Harriet Vane murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained at her death as fragments and notes. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published ...
'', the Authors' Note (plural, since the novel was finished posthumously by another author) states that Vane published a monograph on Le Fanu in 1946.) After months of unpleasant incidents at the college and with no solution in sight, Harriet turns once again to Wimsey for help. By the end of the book the villain has been discovered 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 quiet wedding in Oxford with no notice to the press, and escape to their new country residence, Talboys, a Tudor farmhouse in North
Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...
which Harriet had admired as a child and which Peter has 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'' is a Lord Peter Wimsey– Harriet Vane murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained at her death as fragments and notes. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published ...
'', a novel abandoned by Sayers and finished by
Jill Paton Walsh Gillian Honorine Mary Herbert, Baroness Hemingford, (née Bliss; 29 April 1937 – 18 October 2020), known professionally as Jill Paton Walsh, was an English novelist and children's writer. She may be known best for her Booker Prize-nominated n ...
, is set in and around London, shortly after Wimsey and Vane 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 or 1941). Chronologically between the two are ''The Wimsey Papers'', a series of
epistolary Epistolary means "in the form of a letter or letters", and may refer to: * Epistolary ( la, epistolarium), a Christian liturgical book containing set readings for church services from the New Testament Epistles * Epistolary novel * Epistolary poem ...
articles Sayers wrote for ''The Spectator'' at the beginning of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Jill Paton Walsh referenced ''The Wimsey Papers'' in writing ''
A Presumption of Death ''A Presumption of Death'' is a 2002 Lord Peter Wimsey– Harriet Vane mystery novel by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on ''The Wimsey Papers'' by Dorothy L. Sayers. The novel is Walsh's first original Lord Peter Wimsey novel, following ''T ...
'', 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.Reynolds (1993), ''p. 340'' However, Paton Walsh did not follow this part of the Sayers heritage, and in her Wimsey books no further children come after the original three.


Fictional works by Harriet Vane (mentioned by Dorothy Sayers and/or Jill Paton Walsh)

Blades of Hatred (The Late Scholar, ch. 8)
Curiosity Killed the Cat (Busman’s Honeymoon, ch. 13) joke?
Death ‘Twixt Wind and Water (Gaudy Night, ch. 11; Thrones, Dominations, ch. 10; The Late Scholar, ch. 10)
Death in the Pot A (A Presumption of Death, ch. 4)
Fountain Pen Mystery, The (Have His Carcase, ch. 1; The Attenbury Emeralds, ch. 17; A Presumption of Death, ch. 4)
Murder by Degrees (Have His Carcase, ch. 1; A Presumption of Death, ch. 4; The Late Scholar, ch. 9)
Sands of Crime, The (Gaudy Night, ch. 1)
Sheridan Le Fanu Monograph (Thrones, Dominations, Author’s Note)
Short Stories(Busman’s Honeymoon, ch. 14)
ovel set in Carcassonne(Have His Carcase, ch. 1)
ovel set in Madrid(Have His Carcase, ch. 1)
eries of short stories set in Berlin(Have His Carcase, ch. 1)


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, graduating BA with first-class honours in 1915 and as an MA in 1920. 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, born Ivan Grigorievich Korshun () (6 March 1881 – 27 August 1966), was a writer and translator of Russian Jewish background who spent his later life in exile. Early life Cournos was born in Zhytomyr, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine ...
(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.


Bibliography


Books by Dorothy L. Sayers

* ''
Strong Poison ''Strong Poison'' is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears. Plot The novel opens with mystery author Harriet Vane on trial for the murder of her forme ...
'' (1930) * ''
Have His Carcase ''Have His Carcase'' is a 1932 locked-room mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers, her seventh novel featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the second in which Harriet Vane appears. Plot During a hiking holiday on the South West coast of England, the detecti ...
'' (1932) * ''
Gaudy Night ''Gaudy Night'' (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane. The dons of Harriet Vane's '' alma mater'', the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on Say ...
'' (1936) * ''
Busman's Honeymoon ''Busman's Honeymoon'' is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh and last featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and her fourth and last to feature Harriet Vane. Plot introduction Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry and go to spend thei ...
'' (1937) (As Lady Peter Wimsey) * ''
In the Teeth of the Evidence ''In the Teeth of the Evidence'' is a collection of short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers first published by Victor Gollancz Ltd, Victor Gollancz in 1939 in literature, 1939. The book's title is taken from the first story in the collection. Conte ...
'' (1939) (editions published after 1942 usually add ''Talboys'', the last story Sayers wrote to feature Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey)


Books by Jill Paton Walsh

* ''
Thrones, Dominations ''Thrones, Dominations'' is a Lord Peter Wimsey– Harriet Vane murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained at her death as fragments and notes. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published ...
'' (1998) by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh (as Lady Peter Wimsey) * ''
A Presumption of Death ''A Presumption of Death'' is a 2002 Lord Peter Wimsey– Harriet Vane mystery novel by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on ''The Wimsey Papers'' by Dorothy L. Sayers. The novel is Walsh's first original Lord Peter Wimsey novel, following ''T ...
'' (2002) by Jill Paton Walsh (as Lady Peter Wimsey) * ''
The Attenbury Emeralds ''The Attenbury Emeralds'' is the third Lord Peter Wimsey- Harriet Vane detective novel written by Jill Paton Walsh. Featuring characters created by Dorothy L. Sayers, it was written with the co-operation and approval of Sayers' estate. It was ...
'' (2010) by Jill Paton Walsh (as Lady Peter Wimsey) * ''
The Late Scholar ''The Late Scholar'' is the fourth Lord Peter Wimsey- Harriet Vane detective novel written by Jill Paton Walsh. Featuring characters created by Dorothy L. Sayers, it was written with the co-operation and approval of Sayers' estate. It was publ ...
'' (2013) by Jill Paton Walsh (as Duchess of Denver)


Portrayal in film, TV or theatre

Harriet Vane was portrayed by
Constance Cummings Constance Cummings CBE (May 15, 1910 – November 23, 2005) was an American-British actress with a career spanning over 50 years. Early life Cummings was born in Seattle, Washington, the only daughter and younger child of Kate Logan (née Cu ...
in a 1940 film adaptation of ''
Busman's Honeymoon ''Busman's Honeymoon'' is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh and last featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and her fourth and last to feature Harriet Vane. Plot introduction Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry and go to spend thei ...
'' (US: ''The Haunted Honeymoon''), with Robert Montgomery as Peter Wimsey. However, the film bore little resemblance to Sayers' writing, and she refused to see it. Vane was voiced by
Sarah Badel Sarah M. Badel (born 30 March 1943) is a retired British stage and film actress. She is the daughter of actors Alan Badel and Yvonne Owen. Life and career Badel was born in London to actor, Alan Badel and actress, Yvonne Owen. She was educated ...
in a BBC Radio 4 serialization of 'Busman's Honeymoon' in 1983 and was played by
Harriet Walter Dame Harriet Mary Walter (born 24 September 1950) is a British actress. She has received a Laurence Olivier Award as well as numerous nominations including for a Tony Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 20 ...
in the 1987
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
television adaptations of ''Strong Poison'', ''Have his Carcase'' and ''Gaudy Night'' and by
Emily Richard Emily Richard (born 25 January 1948) is a British actress and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. One of three sisters, Richard was born in London, where she attended drama school in 1966, aged 18, but she was asked to leave afte ...
in the 1988 stage adaptation of ''Busman's Honeymoon'' at The Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. In a 2005 BBC audio production of Gaudy Night, Harriet Vane was played by
Joanna David Joanna David (born Joanna Elizabeth Hacking; 17 January 1947) is an English actress, best known for her television work. Life David was born in Lancaster, England, to Davida Elizabeth (''née'' Nesbitt) and John Almond Hacking. In 1971, she ...
.


References

;Citations ;Bibliography * * *
James Brabazon James Martin Brabazon (born 18 February 1972), is a British documentary filmmaker, journalist, and author. Brabazon is best known for his work in conflict situations. He first gained attention as the only journalist to film the LURD rebel group ...
(1981) ''Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Vane, Harriet Fictional writers Dorothy L. Sayers characters Female characters in literature Literary characters introduced in 1930