VI Appendix

1 Abandoned Research

In the course of my research for this treatise, I have tried to pursue another line of inquiry apart from those unravelled in the preceding chapters. I attempted to examine contemporary critical reaction with a view to establishing the reactions of an - admittedly limited - audience to the emergence of female detective novelists. Unfortunately, Berlin was the only possible venue for direct library research, and the material available was either insufficient for my line of query or, where it was accessible, did not provide any information on the subject. I have canvassed the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, the Universitätsbibliothek of the Freie Universität Berlin, and the libraries of both the Institut für Englische Philologie and the Institut für Publizistik. The relevant print media, namely British newspapers throughout the years 1920 to 1930, were largely absent. Those obtainable, such as the Times and its Literary Supplement or the Daily Telegraph, provided anything but a broad survey, which made their examination redundant; to conclude a wider critical opinion from a few lines in the Times Literary Supplement, or the absence of any reviews in the Daily Telegraph seemed strained. Thus research in Berlin came to an end.

The idea of visiting the London papers' archives in person, though it did occur to me, had to be abandoned for reasons of time, money and the appropriateness of means. I then referred my investigation to the Internet, contacting the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, the Agatha Christie Society, the Marion E. Wade Centre which stores material on Dorothy L. Sayers, and a private person who writes her doctoral thesis on the subject. The only positive reply came five weeks before my thesis was due and suggested I applied for a photocopy request form to be posted to me which, completed, would have enabled me to require photocopies of almost ten folders of reviews priced at $0.25 per page, plus $5.00 for every 25 pages, plus postage and handling. All this would have necessitate the use of the regular postal system between Germany and the United States, since none of the files is available for downloading via e-mail. Since it took the Marion E. Wade Centre more than a month to answer my e-mail, I concluded that the complicated transfer of photocopied files would probably take me well beyond my deadline, so I abandoned this promising path as well. Nonetheless, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who kindly and promptly responded to my request; in particular, my gratitude goes out to Jasmine Simeone, who went several extra miles for me.

Two lines having failed, I then tried to find a compilation of critical reactions to either female detective novelists, but apparently there is no such thing, at least not in Berlin or in the library catalogues availabe for long distance loan.

All in all, I could only conclude that, short of travelling to Great Britain and the United States, I would have to leave the interesting question of critical reaction to Agatha Christie's and Dorothy L. Sayers's work unanswered. Maybe this will be someone else's profitable topic for a scholarly discussion.