In Writing for the Masses: Dorothy L. Sayers and the Victorian Literary Tradition Dr. Christine A. Colon explores how Sayers carefully negotiates the complexities of early twentieth century literary culture by embracing a specifically Victorian literary tradition of writing to engage a wide audience. Using a variety of examples from Sayers's detective fiction, essays, and religious drama, Dr. Colon charts Sayers's development as a writer whose intense desire to connect with her audience eventually compels her to embrace the role of a Victorian sage for her own age. Ultimately, the Victorian literary tradition not only provides her with an empowering model for her own work as she struggles as a writer of detective fiction to balance her integrity as an artist with her desire to reach a mass audience but also facilitates her growth as a public intellectual as she strives to help her nation recover from the devastation of World War II.

The essays collected in Jane Austen and the Arts; Elegance, Propriety, and Harmony examine Austen's understanding of the arts, her aesthetic philosophy, and her role as artist. Together, they explore Austen's connections with Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Madame de Stael, Joanna Baillie, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, and other writers engaged in debates on the sensuous experience and the intellectual judgment of art. Our contributors look at Austen's engagement with diverse art forms, painting, ballet, drama, poetry, and music, investigating our topic within historically grounded and theoretically nuanced essays. They represent Austen as a writer-thinker reflecting on the nature and practice of artistic creation and considering the social, moral, psychological, and theological functions of art in her fiction. We suggest that Austen knew, modified, and transformed the dominant aesthetic discourses of her era, at times ironically, to her own artistic ends. As a result, a new, and compelling image of Austen emerges, a "portrait of a lady artist" confidently promoting her own distinctly post-enlightenment aesthetic system.

In Writing for the Masses: Dorothy L. Sayers and the Victorian Literary Tradition Dr. Christine A. Colon explores how Sayers carefully negotiates the complexities of early twentieth century literary culture by embracing a specifically Victorian literary tradition of writing to engage a wide audience. Using a variety of examples from Sayers's detective fiction, essays, and religious drama, Dr. Colon charts Sayers's development as a writer whose intense desire to connect with her audience eventually compels her to embrace the role of a Victorian sage for her own age. Ultimately, the Victorian literary tradition not only provides her with an empowering model for her own work as she struggles as a writer of detective fiction to balance her integrity as an artist with her desire to reach a mass audience but also facilitates her growth as a public intellectual as she strives to help her nation recover from the devastation of World War II.

The essays collected in Jane Austen and the Arts; Elegance, Propriety, and Harmony examine Austen's understanding of the arts, her aesthetic philosophy, and her role as artist. Together, they explore Austen's connections with Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Madame de Stael, Joanna Baillie, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, and other writers engaged in debates on the sensuous experience and the intellectual judgment of art. Our contributors look at Austen's engagement with diverse art forms, painting, ballet, drama, poetry, and music, investigating our topic within historically grounded and theoretically nuanced essays. They represent Austen as a writer-thinker reflecting on the nature and practice of artistic creation and considering the social, moral, psychological, and theological functions of art in her fiction. We suggest that Austen knew, modified, and transformed the dominant aesthetic discourses of her era, at times ironically, to her own artistic ends. As a result, a new, and compelling image of Austen emerges, a "portrait of a lady artist" confidently promoting her own distinctly post-enlightenment aesthetic system.