Gaudy Night
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 2019-02-07

Gaudy Night, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12253 / CC BY SA 3.0

#1935_British_novels
#Campus_novels
#Novels_by_Dorothy_L._Sayers
#University_of_Oxford_in_fiction
#British_philosophical_novels
#Novels_set_in_Oxford
#Victor_Gollancz_Ltd_books
#British_mystery_novels
#Novels_set_in_the_1930s
Gaudy Night

Gaudy Night (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane.

The dons of Harriet Vane's "alma mater", the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on Sayers' own Somerville College), have invited her back to attend the annual 'Gaudy' celebrations. However, the mood turns sour when someone begins a series of malicious pranks including poison-pen messages, obscene graffiti, the destruction of a set of proofs and crafting vile effigies. Desperate to avoid a possible murder in college, Harriet eventually asks her old friend Wimsey to investigate.

Harriet Vane returns with trepidation to Shrewsbury College, Oxford to attend the Gaudy dinner. Expecting hostility because of her notoriety, she is surprised to be welcomed warmly by the dons, and rediscovers her old love of the academic life.

Some time later the Dean of Shrewsbury writes to ask for help. There has been an outbreak of anonymous letters, vandalism and threats, apparently from someone within the college, and a scandal is feared. Harriet, herself a victim of poison-pen letters since her trial, reluctantly agrees to help, and spends much of the next few months in residence at the college, ostensibly to do research on Sheridan Le Fanu and to assist a don with her book.
As she wrestles with the case, trying to narrow down the list of suspects and avert a major scandal, Harriet is forced to examine her ambivalent feelings about love and marriage, along with her attraction to academia as an intellectual (and emotional) refuge. Her personal dilemma becomes entangled with darkly hinted suspicions and prejudices raised by ...