The need for money was certainly at least one motivation for all of them to write for publication. Let us consider each author’s situation and accomplishments in this light.

George Thirkell was unemployed and no longer a source of support. Angela Thirkell had a young son, completely dependent and two older sons whom she helped from time to time. She had written for various publications, starting in 1921, while she was living in Australia with George. Some of these early writings were in Australian publications and some in English ones. 

After her return to England in 1929 she started writing books. She needed money, first to reduce her dependence on her parents and friends and eventually to provide complete financial independence. Her first book, the autobiographical Three Houses, was followed by novels, a biography, and one children’s book, The Grateful Sparrow. Eventually she found her way to writing books set in Barsetshire, and started the one Barsetshire book per year pattern she was to follow until her death. She produced 4 non-series novels, the two biographical books, one children’s book and 28 Barsetshire books. There was an additional Barsetshire book left uncompleted at her death, which was finished by C. A. Lejeune and published as Three Score and Ten in 1961.

Dorothy L. Sayers was the only one of these four authors to have paid employment, other than writing. She had a variety of jobs after completing her university education. She worked in publishing, as a teacher and for nine years in advertising, but these jobs apparently didn’t pay well enough to support a single woman, since she received financial assistance from her parents until her Lord Peter novels became successful. 

She wrote the first several Lord Peter novels while working in her advertising job at Bensons, where her efforts in promotional programs for Guinness and The Mustard Club were well known. Also, at this time she became pregnant, and the father of the child turned out to be both married and unwilling (and probably unable) to provide financial assistance.  She managed to keep her family, friends and employers in ignorance of her pregnancy, and went away for the birth of her son.  She then arranged to pay to have him raised by a cousin.  The financial success of her books became even more important. 

While still working at Bensons, but after Lord Peter had made his print appearance, she met “Mac” Fleming, a divorced WWI veteran, who she married, in part because he promised to adopt her son.  The early years of their marriage were happy, but he was in and out of work, and as his physical and emotional problems became worse he became more of a burden rather than a financial partner. However, the success of her books allowed her to leave her job to write full time. Her father’s death in 1928 left her the head of the family, with the care of her mother and elderly aunt in addition to a husband and son. At one point their marital problems caused Sayers to consider a formal separation from her husband, but in the end she decided against it and in 1930 or so he finally adopted her son, although the boy never came to live with them.

In about 1936-37 she started transferring her major writing projects from detective fiction to plays and from there to religious writings, essays and translations. However in the 15 or so years she wrote detective fiction she produced 12 novels, 11 of them about Lord Peter, over 30 short stories, worked on several joint projects with other members of the Detection Club and edited three major collections of Detective and Horror fiction. An unfinished Lord Peter novel, Thrones, Dominations was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998. This was followed by A Presumption of Death, loosely inspired by “The Wimsey Papers”, articles about the family she wrote during the early days of WWII for The Spectator. And in 1944 Sayers published her only children’s book, Even the Parrot.

When D. E. Stevenson married James Reid Peploe, he was a captain, later major in the British Army. He was in Edinburgh on medical leave from service in WWI after a head injury. Eventually this would lead to almost total deafness. It is not known how long he was able to remain in active military service. They married in 1916, and had three children by 1922, however the eldest daughter died of illness in 1928 and they had a fourth child in 1930. 

Stevenson published two books of poetry for adults. Her sister married into the Chambers publishing family, and Stevenson had a novel, Peter West, serialized in The Chambers Journal, and published by them in book form in 1923, but it wasn’t a success. However in the early thirties she started the highly successful Miss Buncle and Mrs. Tim series, and by the end of the 1930’s had 10 new books in print in the U.K. Although the first of her books wasn’t published in the U.S. until 1937, by 1940 she had 11 books in print there. 

Before bombing caused the family to move to Moffat early in WWII, they had been living in Glasgow, and James had been in charge of Glasgow University’s Athletic Grounds, so he must have left the military prior to this. It is likely that a major portion of the costs of such things as “public” boarding schools for the three surviving children, the nice house they purchased on moving to Moffat, etc. was supplied by D.E. Stevenson’s successful writing career.

During the war years in addition to writing novels, most of which dealt with conditions in England during the war, she also had a venture into children’s books. Possibly influenced by her cousin Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses, she published an illustrated children’s poetry book using the title Alister and Co. in the U.S. A few years later the same poems, plus two more were published in England with new illustrations, using the title It’s Nice to Be Me. She eventually published a total of 45 novels plus the poetry.

Georgette Heyer’s first book was published more or less as a whim in 1921 when she was only 19, her father feeling that the story, written to amuse her brother during a period of illness, was worthy of publication, helped her deal with an agent and publisher. She wrote steadily after that, and had published 5 books by 1925. However, in that year the financial need to write increased, as her father died, shortly before her marriage, leaving her to support her mother, who eventually received the non-U.S. foreign rights to all of Heyer’s books. Heyer also supported her youngest brother, Frank who was in his mid teens until he had completed his schooling.

Early in their married life her husband, George Ronald Rougier (known as Ronald) worked as a mining engineer, traveling to out of the way places like the Caucasus and Macedonia. Sometimes she traveled with him and sometimes she stayed in England. However, he had always dreamed of becoming a barrister. He tried several ways of making money in England while reading for the bar. He eventually did become a barrister, but for many years Heyer’s writing was the major source of income for the extended family. Ongoing disputes with the English tax authorities about the tax treatment of certain writing income was a further financial strain. Eventually, over a writing career of some 50 years, Heyer produced 4 contemporary romance novels, 40 historical novels, most with at least an element of romance, 12 thrillers, a book of short stories, as well as some assorted articles for magazines.
 

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