Welcome to a very special episode of As My Wimsey Takes Me! In this episode, historian Mo Moulton joins us to talk about their new book THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY: HOW DOROTHY L. SAYERS AND HER OXFORD CIRCLE REMADE THE WORLD FOR WOMEN. Mo tells us about the amazing individuals who made up the Mutual Admiration Society, their lives and accomplishments, and how this friendship influenced Sayers as a thinker and an author.
THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY is now available for purchase in the US and UK. Additionally, Mo will be on tour promoting the book. You can find more information about tour dates and locations on their website and in the graphic below:
Download the episode 3.5 transcript.
Shownotes:
- “The Pound circle and the Hogarth Press“; Sharon’s referring to the wide-ranging influence of Ezra Pound and Leonard and Virginia Woolf during the Modernist period. Ezra Pound was a poet and editor who propelled writers like T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and H.D. into the public eye. Leonard and Virginia Woolf, in addition to being accomplished critics and authors in their own right, also ran a literary press that shaped the Modernist canon through its publications.
- Sexton Blake was a popular pulp detective fiction character during the era of Dorothy L. Sayers and the MAS.
- ARE WOMEN HUMAN? is Sayers’ treatise on the essential personhood of women, originally delivered as a talk to a women’s society in 1938.
- “RIP The Toast”; The Toast was one of the funniest and most feminist sites on the Internet until it shut down in 2016. Here’s a link to all of Mo Moulton’s writing for The Toast.
- “RIP Readerville”; Readerville was the forum of readers, for and by readers, that was a formative part of Charis’ and Sharon’s “growing up on the Internet.” See this interview with founder Karen Templer and this New York Times article for more about Readerville.
- Mo recounts the story of the “most beautiful and encouraging lemon” that Marjorie Barber sent to DLS in this lovely Toast article. Sharon has likewise treasured this most beautiful and encouraging lemon watercolor that Charis painted and mailed to her during a particularly difficult time:
About Mo: Dr. Mo Moulton is a historian of 20th century Britain and Ireland, interested in gender, sexuality, and colonialism/postcolonialism. They work as a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at the University of Birmingham, where they are the Director of the Modern British Studies Centre. Moulton earned their PhD from Brown University and spent several years working in the History & Literature program at Harvard University.
You can find Mo on Twitter @hammock_tussock and at their website, momoulton.com.
