Mo Moulton

A most worthy read. Like most people (I suspect) I was drawn to the book by Dorothy Sayer's name, but although she may be the main attraction for fans of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, she is definitely not the sole focus.

It is truly a group biography, and a picture of many of the changes in the English social and cultural landscape between the beginning of the 20th century and the 1980's. The Mutual Admiration Society (MAS) was a group of young women who studied together at Somerville College in Oxford during the period leading up to World War I. Although I might take exception to the assertion that they "remade the world for women", there is no question that they stretched the boundaries of what women of their class were able to achieve in life beyond what had previously been possible.

The "core four" of the MAS included Dorothy Sayers ("DLS"), a theological thinker and writer in addition to the author of the Wimsey books; Muriel St Clare Byrne, a Tudor scholar and author eventually awarded an OBE; Dorothy Rowe ("D Rowe"), a popular and successful teacher and important theatrical innovator; and Charis Frankenburg, a champion of women's reproductive rights and proselytizer for compassionate, informed child care. While [a:Mo Moulton|7888870|Mo Moulton|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] leaves no question that there was much to admire in these women, she is careful to point out that they could be narrow minded, in many ways clinging to the upper middle class privileges into which they were born. For instance, they were generally apprehensive that the careful, wise governing of their educated and monied peers would become a thing of the past once universal suffrage was enacted in England - or when the inhabitants of British colonies became self-governing.

While they shared lifelong camaraderie mutual support, each of these women dealt with circumstances that were unique to themselves as they pursued their career goals. DLS struggled to reconcile her personal religious doctrines with her need for physical relationships coupled with some ambivalence about the idea of marriage. Muriel maintained a life partnership with Marjorie Barber (a teacher who also had attended Somerville), a relationship that was tested as a result of Muriel's involvement with another woman. D Rowe never married or sustained a long term relationship, but hardly fit the classic mold of a spinster, helping to establish and push to extraordinary success the Bournemouth Little Theater company. And Charis, who grew up Christian but whose father had a Jewish background, and who married into a Jewish family and community, was never fully comfortable in either world.

Beyond sharing the stories of these remarkable women, [b:The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women|51998629|The Mutual Admiration Society How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women|Mo Moulton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569300639l/51998629._SX50_SY75_.jpg|68805017] consistently stimulated me to ponder their life trajectories in comparison with my own, and to draw parallels between the challenges they endured and what we face today. This was probably most true in the case of Charis, who fought with many groups, but primarily the Catholic Church, over making birth control widely available, a dispute that continues to this day. Maternal mortality rates, a problem that persists in the United States, was another concern for Charis nearly a century ago. Clearly the world has not been remade for women in this regard.

I got a great deal more out of this book than I had anticipated. And I'm going to make a point of reading Gaudy Nights (a Wimsey/Vane novel set at a fictionalized Somerville) very soon!

Note 1: Although GR doesn't have the Audible copy set up as one of the available editions, I listened rather than read. I'm still undecided about whether I liked the narration, which I found somewhat annoyingly brittle at times.

Note 2: Because the first few chapters include references to a number of other women who were part of the MAS during the Somerville years, it was a bit confusing to sort out all the individuals while listening. Once the stories were distilled down to the main four plus their partners, it was much easier to follow.… (meer)

Dorothy Sayers and her college circle of women friends were a high achieving group. Sayers is the best known of them as the author of the Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries, but she was not the only one to achieve a great deal- and the Whimsy stories were by no means her only writing. One of the group, a historian, discovered a cache of Tudor era letters, which she translated into modern English and published over the course of 40 years. One was in a long term lesbian love triangle. One became a birth control advocate, a parenting expert (she wrote much on those subjects), and midwife.

They met at Oxford, where they were a group of some of the few women to be admitted in that time. At the time, a few women were allowed to attend, but they could not receive degrees. This came later (in 1920); some of the group were given retroactive degrees. Sayers wrote an essay titled “Are Women Human?”, which, it seems, women really weren’t in those days. The MAS was a female equivalent of The Inklings; a university group of writers and scholars with common interests.

This group biography covers the women’s lives from Oxford to their deaths. It’s extremely well researched (the notes and bibliography take up almost 60 pages) and detailed. It’s not fast reading, but I found it fascinating.… (meer)

A very nicely done group biography about a group of friends who met at Somerville College, Oxford, in the early 20th century. They gave their group the semi-ironic nickname the Mutual Admiration Society—or MAS, as Mo Moulton refers to it—and while some drifted away after graduation, others remained lifelong friends. I'd only heard of two members of the group before—Dorothy L. Sayers, best known for the Peter Wimsey series of novels, and Muriel St Clare Byrne, editor of the Lisle Letters. The other two main members—Charis Frankenburg, author of a number of popular child-rearing books, and Dorothea Rowe, a teacher and co-founder of an amdram society—were new to me.

The subtitle is more than a bit overblown, and at times Moulton struggles to escape the conventions of academic writing. (Not in terms of the use of jargon, but if you know how History grad students are taught to write chapters, you'll see that formula being followed quite scrupulously here.) However, their eye for detail is good, their archival research clearly extensive, and they're careful to explore and contextualise the lives of the lesser known members of MAS as much as they do the far better known Sayers. Moulton also presents these women warts and all: they don't gloss over the group's racism or anti-Semitism, or the ways that their friendships ebbed and flowed over the decades.

Definitely one to pick up if you're interested in either Sayers or the social history of the early 20th century UK.… (meer)

Dorothy L. Sayers, best known as a mystery author; Muriel St. Claire Byrne, playwright and historian specializing in Tudor England; Chariss Barrett Frankenburg, midwife and child health educator and magistrate; and Dorothy Rowe, teacher and theatre producer (director) met at Somerville College in Oxford. They nicknamed their group the Mutual Admiration Society, however it was actually more like a modern critique group, reading and commenting on one another's work. Their lives remained intertwined with occasional interruptions for the remainder of their lives. Moulton traces each woman's career, accomplishments, romantic life and legacy. From the years just prior to WWI in which they reached adulthood, the interwar years in which they established careers, the challenges of WWII and the the many changes of post war England the four women exemplify the effort to create new life patterns for women.… (meer)