Editing Gaudy Night (section)

==Reception==
Writing in 1936, [[George Orwell]] disagreed with the opinion of an [[The Observer|''Observer'']] critic who felt that ''Gaudy Night'' had put Miss Sayers "definitely among the great writers". Orwell concluded, to the contrary, that "her slickness in writing has blinded many readers to the fact that her stories, considered as detective stories, are very bad ones. They lack the minimum of probability that even a detective story ought to have, and the crime is always committed in a way that is incredibly tortuous and quite uninteresting".<ref name="Orwell">{{Cite book |title=The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: Volume 1, An Age like This, 1920 to 1940 |last=Orwell |first=George |publisher=Secker & Warburg |year=1968 |editor-last=Orwell |editor-first=Sonia |pages=161–162 |editor-last2=Angus |editor-first2=Ian}} The review was originally published in ''[[The New English Weekly]]'', 23 January 1936.</ref>

In a letter to [[Christopher Tolkien|his son Christopher]] from May 1944, [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] wrote: "I could not stand Gaudy Night. I followed P. Wimsey from his attractive beginnings so far, by which time I conceived a loathing for him (and his creatrix) not surpassed by any other character in literature known to me, unless by his Harriet. The honeymoon one (Busman's H[oneymoon].?) was worse. I was sick."<ref name="Tolkien">{{Cite book|title=[[The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien|The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien Revised and Expanded]]|last=Tolkien|first=J. R. R.|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|editor-last=Carpenter|editor-first=Humphrey|editor-last2=Tolkien|editor-first2=Christopher|year=2023|pages=118–119}}</ref><!-- DO NOT change the punctuation in the quote. It is as written. -->

[[Jacques Barzun]] stated that "''Gaudy Night'' is a remarkable achievement. Harriet Vane and Saint-George, the undergraduate nephew of Lord Peter, help give variety, and the college setting justifies good intellectual debate. The motive is magnificently orated on by the culprit in a scene that is a striking set-piece. And though the Shrewsbury dons are sometimes hard to distinguish one from another, the College architecture is very good".<ref name="COFC">[[Jacques Barzun|Barzun, Jacques]] and Taylor, Wendell Hertig.  ''A Catalogue of Crime''. New York: Harper & Row.  1971, revised and enlarged edition 1989.  {{ISBN|0-06-015796-8}}</ref>