Now comes the question, what if anything is similar about these authors' actual writings?

I find that they all wrote character driven novels. Each of them has acquired multi-generational followers (There is a Dorothy L. Sayers Society and there are web sites and active e-mail discussion groups for Sayers, Heyer, and Stevenson) who think of the characters in their books as if they were real people, with a life before and after what was actually published.

We have reason to believe that the authors considered their characters to have a “real” existence of sorts, outside of the published books. Thirkell enjoyed “going to Barsetshire” with selected friends, discussing what characters were doing. Sayers both talked and wrote about the history of Lord Peter’s family (see The Wimsey Family by C.W. Scott-Giles) and about what was happening to individuals after she had stopped writing the books. Stevenson is quoted as saying that she knew far more about her characters than she ever had time or space to disclose in her books – their likes, dislikes, history, etc. Heyer, in letters to her publishers and agents makes it clear that her characters often have minds of their own and decide to change her plots if the activities she had originally selected for them didn’t fit.

Additionally, I realized when reading Geoffery Cox’s article in the 2004 Journal of the Angela Thirkell Society, these four authors all gave the reader a strong sense of place. Their books contain frequent evocative descriptive passages, allowing us to “see” the places where the characters are living. At least some books by Thirkell, Stevenson and Sayers include maps to help the reader understand the lay of the land.  And when Heyer’s characters travel across the English countryside, the modern reader with a detailed map of the area can readily follow their path.

They all depicted life in England (and/or Scotland) and include such persons as Church of England vicars, talkative and/or eccentric ladies of “a certain age”, elderly relatives, nannies, cooks and so on. Events such as garden parties, fetes, weddings, bring and buy sales, working parties and meetings are covered. Humor is very much in order. The reader has many causes to smile and occasionally laugh out loud.

They all used their broad education in the humanities to create characters who quote and refer to great literature of the past. Fans of Sayers and Thirkell have published companion books, such as Cynthia Snowden’s Going to Barsetshire and Stephen P. Clark’s The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion which attempt to provide references to these quotations and explain terms which have become obscure with the passage of time, among other services to readers.  Fans of Heyer and Stevenson, working together aided by the internet, are working on projects to collect similar information about the works of these authors.

All four of these authors used experiences from their own life as inspiration for their novels. For example:

 Thirkell used places she had stayed and people she had met to inspire characters/towns in her books, as is described in Portrait.

Sayers used her experiences working in advertising in her novel  Murder Must Advertise, her vacations with Mac in Scotland provided the location for Five Red Herrings.

D. E. Stevenson’s popular Mrs. Tim series was based on her personal experiences as wife of a serving military officer, and in later life her personal travel would inspire some of her characters to make similar trips.

Heyer’s early books are very autobiographical, in much the same way as Ankle Deep and O, These Men, These Men were for Thirkell, and as she lived in or visited various parts of England, the locations used  in her historical romances expanded. 

Sayers' detective novels all take place prior to WWII and all but one have Lord Peter Wimsey as the hero, with other continuing characters. In Gaudy Night and Thrones, Dominations the impending war is seen. The “Wimsey Papers” offer interesting insight into some of the early WWII impact.

While D. E. Stevenson’s novels take place in various parts of England and Scotland (with occasional short excursions to foreign parts such as Rome, Egypt, Denmark, etc.) most of them are “connected” in some way, with characters from one book appearing or being mentioned in another. Children in different books may attend the same boarding school, a doctor from one book attends the birth of a baby in another book when the local doctor is unavailable, the minister who speaks in the absence of the local minister or helps with a funeral is often someone we know from a different book, also there are some direct sequels and series. Changes brought on by the war and its aftermath are shown.

Heyer’s thrillers and suppressed contemporary novels offer some direct insight to England during pre- and post-WWII times.

Each of them wrote some of their works from a male point of view. Angela Thirkell did this in Trooper to the Southern Cross and also in Demon in the House as well as in Summer Half, largely the tale of Colin Keith and his friends and mentors Everard Carter and Noel Merton. Most of Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter books are written from Lord Peter’s point of view. And both Heyer and Stevenson wrote many of their books wholly or in major part from the point of view of male characters. For example:

Heyer’s The Foundling, The Toll-gate, and The Unknown Ajax

Stevenson’s The Green Money, Gerald and Elizabeth, and Five Windows.

From Portrait of a Lady Novelist, we learn that Angela was concerned about the appearance of her dust jackets and often worked quite hard to get what she wanted. When she once wrote that she didn’t care if they were yellow like Gollancz’, she was certainly being ironic.

D.E. Stevenson was concerned about her dust jackets as well, for example being irritated when the blond heroine of one book was pictured with dark hair on the English dust jacket. In the U.S. Stevenson had the vast majority of her dust jackets produced by John O’Hara Cosgrave II, until shortly before his death in 1968. And Mrs. Thirkell’s U.S. dust jackets starting with The Old Bank House through Three Score and Ten, as well as the box set of Wild Strawberries and High Rising were also by Cosgrave.

Heyer was also very concerned that dust jackets be correct in their image of her books. She demanded correct period detail in the illustrations, and eventually found an artist, Barbosa, who did many dust jacket illustrations for her for various publishers and for books published on both sides of the Atlantic.
 

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