Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World For Women

- Blurb -

In the autumn of 1912, a group of young women founded a writing group at Somerville College, Oxford, that changed their lives - and forged a path for generations of ambitious women to come. They called themselves the 'Mutual Admiration Society' - to prevent anyone else from calling them that first. Smart, bold, serious, and funny, these women were also sheltered and chaperoned, barred from receiving degrees despite taking classes and passing exams. But within a few short years, World War I rapidly expanded the rights and opportunities available to women, and in 1920 members of the MAS returned to Oxford to receive full degrees, part of the first group of women to have this honour.Mutual Admiration Society follows these six women as they navigate the complexities of adulthood, work, intimacy and sex in Interwar England. The members took advantage of their opportunities: Dorothy L. Sayers, the group's most famous member, made her name as the writer of witty, intelligent murder mysteries at the height of a Golden Age of detective fiction. Muriel St. Clare Byrne was a Shakespeare expert whose love life featured both a revolving door of female lovers and a lifelong partner. Charis (Barnett) Frankenburg was a child-rearing expert, birth control advocate and one of the first female Justices of the Peace. Dorothy Rowe became a teacher and founded a theatre company; and Muriel 'Jim' Jaeger was a journalist and science fiction writer. They were the first generation to be told that they could have it all: personal and professional fulfillment, public dignity and private succor. But in practice, society still routinely insisted that women make a choice between head and heart. Bringing these women to vivid life, Moulton reveals how Dorothy L. Sayers and her pioneering friends from the Mutual Admiration Society fought their way into modernity.