Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (fictional character) is a bon vivant sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries—usually but not always murders. Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective.
Born in 1890 and aging in real time, Wimsey is described as having at best average height with straw-coloured hair, a beaked nose, and a vaguely foolish face. (Reputedly his looks were patterned after those of academic Roy Ridley). He also possesses considerable intelligence and athletic ability, evidenced by his playing cricket for Oxford University while earning a First and by creating a spectacularly successful publicity campaign for Whifflet cigarettes while working for Pym's Publicity, Ltd. and still, at 40, being able to turn three cartwheels in the office corridor, stopping just short of the boss's open office door ( Murder Must Advertise ). Wimsey sometimes affects a slightly silly behaviour, so that people underestimate him.
Among Lord Peter's hobbies, apart from criminology, is collecting incunabula (books printed in the 15th century). He is an expert on matters of food (especially wine) and male fashion, as well as on classical music. He is quite good at playing Bach's works for keyboard instruments on a piano he babies even more than his books, wines, and cars. One of Lord Peter's cars is a 12-cylinder ("double-six") 1927 Daimler four-seater, which he calls "Mrs. Merdle" after a character in Little Dorrit (by Charles Dickens).
In How I Came to Invent the Character of Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers wrote:
Lord Peter's large income... I deliberately gave him... After all it cost me nothing and at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure to spend his fortune for him. When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. When my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered him an Aubusson carpet. When I had no money to pay my bus fare I presented him with a Daimler double-six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence, and when I felt dull I let him drive it. I can heartily recommend this inexpensive way of furnishing to all who are discontented with their incomes. It relieves the mind and does no harm to anybody.
Janet Hitchman, in the preface to "Striding Folly," remarks that "Wimsey may have been the sad ghost of wartime lover(...). Oxford, as everywhere in the country, was filled with bereaved women, but it may have been more noticeable in university towns where a whole year's intake could be wiped out in France in less than an hour." There is, however, no verifiable evidence of any such World War I lover of Sayers on whom the character of Wimsey might be based.
The novels are set in Britain contemporaneously with when they were written, from the early 1920s to the late 1930s; the story "Talboys" (and Jill Paton Walsh's recent continuations Thrones, Dominations and A Presumption of Death ) continue this into the early 1940s.
Biography
Early Life
Lord Peter Wimsey's first known ancestor is the 12th century knight Gerald de Wimsey, who went with King Richard The Lion Heart on the Third Crusade and took part in the Siege of Acre. This makes the Wimseys an unusually ancient family, since "Very few English noble families go that far in the first creation; rebellions and monarchic head choppings had seen to that" (as reviewer Janet Hitchman noted in the introduction to "Striding Folly"). The family motto, displayed under its coat of arms, is "As My Whimsy Takes Me."
Lord Peter's extended family appears frequently in the novels. He is the second of the three children of Mortimer Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver, and Honoria Lucasta Delagardie, who lives on throughout the novels as the Dowager Duchess of Denver. The Dowager Duchess is affable, intelligent, and strongly supports her younger son, whom she may prefer over his less intelligent and more conventional older brother, Gerald, the 16th Duke. Gerald's snobbish wife, Helen (who detests Wimsey), and their devil-may-care heir, Viscount St. George (Wimsey's nephew, who likes him), also make appearances in the novels, as does Lady Mary, the younger sister of the Duke and Lord Peter.
Lord Peter was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a first-class degree in history. He served in the British Army from 1914–1918 (World War I) including a stint in the trenches, attaining the rank of Major in the Rifle Brigade. In the army he met Sergeant Mervyn Bunter, who had previously been in service. After sharing what the Dowager Duchess referred to as "a jam," the two arranged that if they were both to survive the war, Bunter would become Wimsey's valet. Throughout the books Bunter always takes care to address Wimsey as "Your Lordship"—nevertheless, he is obviously a friend as well as a servant, and Wimsey again and again expresses amazement at Bunter's high efficiency and competence at virtually every sphere of life.
Wimsey suffered a breakdown due to shell shock/post-traumatic stress disorder, and was eventually sent home. After the war he was ill for many months, recovering at the family's ancestral home in Duke's Denver (fictional, like the dukedom it gives its name to) which lies some fifteen miles beyond the original Denver on the A10 near Downham Market and is not to be confused with the major city by that name in Colorado. Bunter arrived and, with the approval of the Dowager Duchess, took up his post. Bunter moved Wimsey to a London flat at 110A Piccadilly, W1 while Wimsey recovered.
Detective Work
Lord Peter begins his hobby of investigation by recovering the Attenbury Emeralds. He also becomes good friends with Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Charles Parker. Bunter, being a man of many talents himself—not least photography—often proves instrumental in Peter's investigations. However, Wimsey is not entirely well. At the end of the investigation in Whose Body? (1923) he hallucinates that he is back in the trenches. He soon recovers his senses and goes on a long holiday.
The next year, he returns (in Clouds of Witness (1926)) to the fictional Riddlesdale in North Yorkshire to assist his older brother Gerald, who has been accused of murdering their sister's fiancé. As Gerald is the current Duke of Denver, the resulting trial takes place in the House of Lords. Their sister, Lady Mary, also falls under suspicion. Lord Peter clears the Duke and Lady Mary, to whom Charles Parker is attracted.
It is not exactly known when Wimsey recruited Miss Climpson to run an undercover employment agency for women, in order to be able to garner information from the world of spinsters and widows which neither master nor man would be able to access, but it is prior to Unnatural Death (1927), in which Miss Climpson assists Wimsey's investigation of the suspicious death of an elderly cancer patient.
As recounted in "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba," in December 1927 Wimsey faked his own death, supposedly while hunting big game in Tanganyika, in order to penetrate and break up a particularly dangerous and well-organised criminal gang. Only Wimsey's mother and sister, the loyal Bunter and Inspector Parker knew he was still alive. Emerging victorious after more than a year masquerading as "the disgruntled sacked servant Rogers", Wimsey remarked that "We shall have an awful time with the lawyers, proving that I am me." In fact, however, he got smoothly back to his old life, and the interlude is never referred to in later books.
In Strong Poison Lord Peter meets Harriet Deborah Vane and falls in love with her at first sight, while she thinks he's a bit crazy. Harriet is a cerebral, Oxford-educated mystery writer on trial for the murder of her former lover. Needless to say, Wimsey saves her from the gallows, but based on the principle that gratitude is not a good foundation for marriage, she politely but firmly declines his frequent proposals. Lord Peter does encourage his friend and foil, Chief Inspector Charles Parker, to propose to his sister, Lady Mary Wimsey, despite the great difference in their rank and wealth. They marry and have a son, named Charles Peter ("Peterkin"), and a daughter, Mary Lucasta.
Wimsey continues to pursue Miss Vane, but does not get much satisfaction. He investigates a murder while on holiday in Scotland ( Five Red Herrings ). On his return he finds Miss Vane is not at home; he learns her location when reporter Salcombe Hardy asks Wimsey to comment on the murder victim Vane discovered on her walking tour of England's coast ( Have His Carcase ). Hardy does not have to point out that Vane might have committed the murder herself—one who was once tried for murder does not have the best reputation. The next morning Wimsey is at her hotel, not only to investigate the death and once more offer proposals of marriage, but also to act as her patron and protector with press and police. Despite a prickly relationship, they do work together to identify the murderer.
Then, back in London, Wimsey goes undercover as "Death Bredon" at an advertising firm, working as a copywriter ( Murder Must Advertise ). Bredon is framed for murder, leading Charles Parker to "arrest" Bredon for murder in front of the press. To distinguish Death Bredon from Lord Peter Wimsey, Parker smuggles Wimsey out of the station and urges him to get into the papers. Accordingly Wimsey accompanies "a Royal personage" to a public event, leading the press to carry pictures of both "Bredon" and Wimsey.
By 1935 Lord Peter is in continental Europe, act
The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion
The Dorothy L Sayers Society is proud to announce the publication of The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion A New Edition Completely Revised and Incorporating
Amazon.com: Lord Peter Wimsey - The Complete Collection ...
Amazon.com: Lord Peter Wimsey - The Complete Collection: Ian Carmichael, John Quentin, Vivien Heilbron, Anna Cropper, Donald Pickering, Derek Newark, John Welsh, Terence Alexander ...
Dorothy L. Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey stories, annotated ...
I'm Bill Peschel and this part of my Web site annotates the novels and short stories of Dorothy L. Sayers.
Lord Peter Wimsey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (fictional character) is a bon vivant sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries ...
LordPeter : The Lord Peter Wimsey Mailing List
LordPeter: The Lord Peter Wimsey Mailing List ... Yahoo! Groups Tips Did you know... Want your group to be featured on the Yahoo!
Lord Peter Wimsey: Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club ...
Rent Lord Peter Wimsey: Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club DVD and over 95,000 other movies at Blockbuster. Buy, Download, or Rent Lord Peter Wimsey: Unpleasantness at the Bellona ...
Have His Carcase: Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery A Lord ...
Have His Carcase: Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery: Amazon.co.uk: Dorothy L Sayers: Books
Amazon.com: The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion ...
Readers of Sayers may like to learn that a second edition of the Lord Peter Wimsey Companion, revised and much expanded, was published in 2002 by the Dorothy L Sayers Society.
Thrones, Dominations: The new Lord Peter Wimsey Novel ...
Thrones, Dominations: The new Lord Peter Wimsey Novel: Amazon.co.uk: Dorothy L Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh: Books
Peter Wimsey FanFiction Archive - FanFiction.Net
Books: Peter Wimsey fanfiction archive with over 17 stories. Come in to read, write, review, and interact with other fans.