Dorothy Sayers: A Self Entire

No doubt it is inconvenient for the writer, but one of the best things that can happen for readers is when a great writer—a truly great writer—is required by circumstances to work in popular genres. These “marketable” books or stories, composed to put food on the table for a genius, often become little doorways for vast numbers of readers into a great mind’s private world, one they otherwise would not have entered. Think of Chesterton’s “Father Brown” series: compelled to write these stories or risk starvation, Chesterton imbued these widely read tales with his own grand ideas about the nature and existence of God, the reality of sin, and the romance of salvation. From here it is a natural next step for a reader to pick up Orthodoxy or The Everlasting Man and embark on a fantastic theological journey that will last a lifetime.