The earliest letters are sprinkled with references to poems, plays or short stories that she had written, in any-or all-of the four languages at her command (English, French, German and Latin.) She fell madly in love with the theatre, not to mention the leading men of the era. Before she reached the age of thirteen, she had read (in the original French) The Three Musketeers, and from that time on, referred to her familiy and assorted locations by their assigned names from the book. She took for herself the identity of Athos. At eighteen, her headmistress announced that Dorothy had come top in all England in the Cambridge Higher Local Examinations with distinction in French and spoken German. The following year she entered Somerville College at Oxford.

Men as men didn't enter her life until she had completed Oxford. She fell in love only once, but they couldn't marry due to multiple differences in values. Subsequently, she had a short-lived affair with another man, who was the father of her only child, a son raised by Dorothy's cousin. Their roles were reversed in the boy's life; the cousin was his 'Mum' and Dorothy his aunt. Not until after her death did the truth come out.

These letters bring to vivid life the enigma who was known world-wide as the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey, the perfect foil. She couldn't afford a luxurious flat, a Daimler, or an Axminster carpet; she could, however, provide them for Lord Peter. She made him and his family and his possessions incredibly real for her millions of readers.

Any devotee of Lord Peter Wimsey will be exceedingly grateful to Barbara Reynolds for her years of loving care in sorting through and editing these letters of one of the world's great novelists. We can but wait-patiently-for volume two, in order to learn how Dorothy wore her hard-earned and well-deserved fame.