World for women. And hes specifically interested in gender, sexuality, colonialism and post colonialism. A ph. D. From Brown University and worked a number of years in history and literature at harvard. Currently, moulton is a senior lecturer, and lastly written another previous book which is published in 2014. The Mutual Admiration Society centers on named mystery writer Dorothy Sayers and five friends who founded a writing group in 1912 at Summerville College, oxford. Sayers and her colleagues entered a time when they could receive an education, but not degrees. October of 1920, they became some of the first women who fully graduate. And usually pushed the boundaries in other ways as well. Looking to forward reproduction, arts and clear family making. Working to overcome the extremely restricted sexism of the time, the women of the Mutual Admiration Society are an inspiration today and we can follow their example as we work to a more equal society. And here to tell us about it at author themselves, mo moulton. [applaus [applause] thank you very much and thank you for coming out in the cold, incredibly cold tuesday night. Its really an honor to be back in hybrid square doing this event. As we mentioned, i taught for six years in the history and Literature Program here so i feel like im in the saddle of the community that actually spawns this book and where this book was born. And to be back here, its a book about community. And about relationships. And how being in the community and having the relationship help us to become more than what we might otherwise be, help us to grow and help us to transcend the boundaries that might otherwise be in place. Its also, as its also a book about whatever happens the day after the revolution, Dorothy Sayers and her friends lived at this moment when there were a lot of famouses first for some reason. Part of the first generation in britain to be able to vote in parliamentary elections. They were part of the first cohort of women to grant a grieve box. And women sitting on jurors and so on and so on. A lot happened at this moment. Part of what i wanted to explore when writing this book what happens when we are given access to a world that doesnt vote for us, a world that maybe a legislation revolution start, but not a full transformation. And the answer to that question is partly community. And the space that these women made for each other. So this book started, it kind of started on an airplane. It started when i bought a novel published in 1935, and its one of the most beloved Dorothy Sayers novels. And its one that is set in Summerville College well, its called truesville in the novel, but its a Womens College at the university. And i bought it for plane reading coming from a conference. Airplane reading can actually change your life. And so i read this book and i was blown away, it was a story of intellectual integrity in a female Scholarly Community and as soon as i got off the plane, i wanted to know who these women were. It was so clear this wasnt just a work of complete imagination, but it was describing their relationships, real community. So i started digging into biographies and becoming frustrated because i was finding out a lot about Dorothy Sayers as a mother, as a wife, as somebody who had relationships with a series of men, i didnt find a lot about her female friendships. And so i started investigating those women. Those demail friendships and i found out they were amazing. The women in her life. The book focuses on oxford university, and especially the four key women, the Mutual Admiration Society and thats what they call themselves and we get to look at why in a minute. And it focuses on four of them who stayed friends throughout their lives and so Dorothy Sayers, she was an advertising, and she became a theologian as well. And another play write. And dorothy rowe who i called her drowe. And i called dorothy dls. The parents in britain were not original in their naming. And drowe, and became an english teacher and karen, the social glue of the group, became a mid wife, a writer, parenti parenting, was a justice of the peace and a variety of other sort of things and touches on a few other people involved in the group. Muriel yager, who became a pioneering fiction writer and one who became a fiction writer at bryn mawr. And so i want to start by giving you an introduction to this group at Summerville College. When theyre first meeting, and give you a flavor of what theyre like. The way that they were both serious and quite fun loving and silly and whacky in all sorts of ways. So the first recorded meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society was november 6th, 1912 and noted iconically in the diary. Miss middlemore at age eight and phyllis had her works whose titles reveal her ongoing infatuation with medieval themes. February 4th, another meeting, over tea in the room and she and jim read their work. And they baptized the club saying if we didnt give that title of Mutual Admiration Society the rest of college would. She wasnt wrong. They earned some digs in that year going downplay, a light hearted play that they put on each year. Vera britain who never joined the ranks, took themselves quite seriously and apparently still do. They also enjoyed the mcca maca and the gruesome and eerie. And they wanted for phyllis to come from london. They crept into their bed and made this on her bed. Hir hairpins for nose and mouth and cushions on its body and stuck a pair of shoes great up at the end of the bed. The crowning touch was a pair of leather gloves holding a bottle with a label suicide by poison and luckily phyllis walked in during preparations and was delighted. Perhaps inspires by the success. They faced an elaborate ghost party. And thats muriel yager who went by jim. And they went to a site of old convert and supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a none. And too many education rendered a woman unmarriageable. Having sworn shed seen this one night on the stroke of 11. Jim invited eight other first year students to meet the ghost. She enlisted and phil list and her aide, and others came to the party in all innocence. Dls had other own elements, preparing latin charms to use in case an exorcism was necessary. Together they sat and told tales of ghosts working into a frightfully creepy state with grisly stories. Drowe quickly began a new story to create a distraction until the cry went around, theres Something White dls saw outside the window a shadowy figure in the garb of a nun. Others noticed a baby in her arms. It was in fact, phyllis dressed up with paint. And they asked her in for coffee and the game was up. The only person the least annoyed and she may not have been was Dorothy Sayers and phyllis was left to spend hours scrubbing off the paint. So i think that this group kind of gave they gave each other the space in this moment in oxford history when, you know, women were advocating for the right to the full degrees and inclusion and it wasnt being granted yet. They were under an enormous amount of scrutiny and pressure to be proper and to prove that they belonged and werent going to transgress too many boundaries and i think being within this group allowed the young women to experiment with different ways of being with different ways of having an intellectual presence and so to be more than they might otherwise have been in that kind of in the face of the strictures. So they finished their education in the midst world war i and between world war i and the difficulties of getting launched in the 1920s, they grew apart for a while. And i think that thats the moment when, as i was beginning the research of this book, i sort of worried that perhaps there was a set of nice stories about the group of friends in university, but was that the end of it. And they experienced lots of good reasons to be distracted from one another and to be sort of selfabsorbed during world war i and into the 1920s. So muriel, for instance, wanted to be an academic and trying to be published and hated working as a school teacher. And dls, sayers hated working as a school teachers, mostly tried not to, tried to get her work published and she had a series of disastrous love affairs culminating, she got pregnant outside of wedlock and she chohad a son and chose to kp that pregnancy secret. Theres four friends reunited and they came back together and that reunion, that reconnection was what fueled transformation in their work, and the deepening of their work and things that we remember them for now. So, i wanted to have just a short meeting that i think gives the flavor of this feeling of reunion. Wrote down what page its on. Sometime in 1928 or very early in 1929 dls reached out to caris. She no longer needed to find a place to foster her son, who was in her home and he was unofficially adopted by his father. As dls put it, by the way, many thanks for your suggestion with regard to the woman doctor, et cetera. Dr. Wright was very nice and mixed me up quite satisfactorily, so thats that. Caris in return pressed dls to attend that years summerville gawdy. Oxford hosted feasts for alumni and they have a nickname, gawdy. Dls was tempted, telling max, i think must go to the gawdy this year. Certainly he replied, why not . Nene years after she returned her oxford degree, returning had become a fraught deal for d will. S and she had delayed writing to make arrangements, one of the deep inner repug nannances t the psycho analysts are talking about. Returning to past locations, rekindling old relations, she told she hated looking back, nostalgia, the whole business. She didnt want to think about her past self or be encouraged to feel sentimental in the company of her companions. I like for instance to see you and drowe because your company is delightful. But my god, College Students i had no bond and we were there once to go. And even if we went theyd say im just as intolerable as i was 15 years ago with every justification, i am. [laughter] at the end of the letter, she told she had finally written to summerville to request a room for the reunion. She said i will sing the song and even sit on the floor and talk jolly. I will not drink cocoa, there are limits. Unfortunately, i dont know whether she drank cocoa. I know she didnt sign the souvenir program. But in returning to summerville and that set of friendships that she had made as a university student, she embarked on this kind of transformati transformation, a sort of intellectual journey of risk taking and vulnerability that led her work in interesting directions. And thats true for the other women as well. But i want to focus on sayers for tonight. Because i think of the story, the story of that reunion and where it led kind of answers one of the core paradoxes that existed in sayers scholarship. So that paradox is, dorothy say,writes these detective novels and then sometime in the mid 30s writes more serious novels. Theyre still detective novels, but have more heft to them. She writes about jesus, broadcast on the bbc. She becomes a theologian who wroo its about well regarded popular theology. She becomes somebody who learns enough medieval italian to be able to translate the first two sections of dantes divine xh comedy. She transforms what shes able to do and that really hasnt been explained by the folks who studied sayers work so i think, you know, if my book has a secret feminist agenda its actually putting sayers back in the context of female friendships that explains that transformation. So she rekindles her friendship with muriel and muriels partner barber, who goes by the nickname barb and its clear that the that the three of them spoke a lot about issues of work, how to live an ethical life and how to be in an ethical relationship. Dls is struggling with her marriage at that time. She wasnt sure whether she should seek a divorce or not. She wasnt sure whether she wanted her son to be adopted by her husband, and muriel was struggling how to build a sus sanable household with a woman and have the Legal Protections that they could using wills, insurance and deeds and that sort of things. She was also struggling with how to navigate a foray into monogamy that began around the sort of early 1930s moment as well. For a long stretch of time she had two lovers who were very important to her. What i think is important is those conversations then informed a series of collaborations that sayers and byrne, dls and muriel undertook and fuels this turn in sayers career. So i have a little bit more to read to you about that, that transfo transformati transformation. Around this late 1920s moment as dls is rekindling this relationship with muriel and barr, she decides to reintroduce a love into the whimsy stories and let me read her words about that decision. Dls had dragged her feet at the idea of introducing romance to her detective novels. Women and love stories and psychology were generally a nuisance in crime stories, she said. But in 1930, seven years after the first appearance of her famous hero, dls told muriel she was getting weary of lord peter who brought in money, but who was getting older and more staid. And the same year she published a novel, it was with the unhappy experiences with a former lover. If shes the hero, clowney, damaged, harriet is the modern woman hurt by love, but whose intelligence carries her through. Harriet is more than a Love Interest. Shes not the heart to peters head, but theyre engaged in a struggle to recognize the desire of heart and head. And more harriet than a detective novelist struggles exactly the problem. How to make the novels more realistic within their comfortable narrative conventions, so she writes strong poison she introduces this problem of Love Interest in a detective novel, how to think about relationships seriously in this genre, and then she is going to stall for time. Shes going to write these well worth your time or do nothing to advance these questions. She even jokes in the midst of it, she says, lord peter says hes very anxious to get spliced and he is 42 and he hopes to pull it off. She was 42 when she wrote that, speaking from experience. So she stalls for time what shes going to do with these characters. Its in conversation with muriel in collaboration with muriel that she find the solution. So muriel had been working as a play write, trying to make a name for mer self as a play wright. Perhaps miss sayers, youd like to write a play based on one of sayers novels and she turned that down and instead proposed to sayers, why dont we write a play together. And dls was sold. She agreed, okay, let write a collaborative play. On february 10th, 1935, dls visited muriel and bars flat in london, over dinner they began to sketch the outlines of a play. That night they stayed up talking about this play business until early the next morning. The next day, over lunch at rules restaurant they mapped out a plan. At muriels suggestion they agreed to use the three proprietary characters, prompted by new versions of usual types and to write a collaborative play that would adapt her novel style to the stage. By the time she left london, an outline had emerged. The play would be set during harriot and peters honeymoon and provide scope not only for charming in the village, but fuller exploration of their relationship. It was obvious by then that harriot and peter needed to reinvent marriage in order for them to suit them. Honeymoon which became the title of the play would show them doing that as dls then realized the characters getting engaged on the plain why harriet at last decided to accept one of peters many proposals. And this was before it was completed and before it was performed. Reading gawdy night and the honeymoon is collaboration between dls, barr and its clear that the characters are not just projectionings on dlss part. Theyre portraits of love and work. Muriel and barr become models. Theres muriel with curly blond hair and theres the dark combliness and a ring just like the ring gives harriet in the honeymoon. So barr was a High School Opportunity and passed along a rumor and given that ring by a fiance who died in the war, but this is probably mixing two things up. Barrs brother graham was killed leading them into action. The ring was a gift from muriel, a fiance who was invisible because of her sex not her death. The writing of busmans honeymoon, was a collaboration, 50 50. Back home in excess, she consulted with her soliciter to make sure it was realistic and the murder machine was physically realistic, the closest ill get to a spoiler, i promise. By february 1916, dls had written 4,000 words of dialog and muriel had written in turn. They got together february, march, a lunch. And in between visits spoke on the telephone and sent each other detailed drafts and long lettered questions, and one signed charmingly, your partner in guilt, dorothy l sayers. And the stage amendment directions in both of their hand writings. In an interview with the press before the play actually opens, dls argued that it brought two features of her detective novels to the stage, first, it followed the rules. Detection club, every movement is done, every clue is laid in full site of the audience. So that the audience has as much chance as a crime investigator of solving the problem. Second the Love Interest so painfulfully extraneous in most plays of this type is central part of the scene. Both of the accomplishments were hard won. I want to skip ahead to my favorite example of this collaborative process of making the Love Interest something other than extraneous to it, to a detective play so this is where barr wasnt a coauthor of the play, she was a crucial interlockter and she objected, that peter and harriet have gone to this cottage in the country for their honeymoon and discovered a murder there. Surprise. They discovered a murder, but barr objects to the idea that harriet and peter would share their wedding night on a dead mans mattress. Dls is instantly apologetic and says tell barr im sorry about the bride bed. She had been thinking pragmatically and they wouldnt choose a secondary place, but he didnt die there. The air of the mattress, muriel thought the whole thing was funny. I feel sure the aired mattress would satisfy barr, the way that theyre mad about it and gave me a laugh. If b