Michael White writes in his biography of Tolkien:

quote:

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No women ever gained admittance to this most select of men's club. According to the legend, in 1943, the American wit and respected literary figure, Dorothy Sayers turned up at the Bird and Baby expecting to be invited to join the men around the table, but she was politely asked to leave. It was very important to these men that the Inklings remained an exclusively male preserve.

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The only problem is that Dorothy Sayers is not American. Dorothy Parker is American. I have been trying to solve that problem but I still don't know who the writer meant. Anyone has any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Michal

The writer almost certainly must have meant the British novelist and scholar Dorothy Sayers.

She was born in Oxford herself and attended the women's college there, where she distinguished herself as a student of languages.

According to the brief biography here, she was considered a friend to the group calling itself The Inklings (including C.S. Lewis as well as Tolkien). She was also deeply religious, as they were, and spent the last decades of her life writing works on theology instead of the detective stories for which she is celebrated.

Of course it is plausible that, even though a friend of the group, she was excluded from joining them in the men's saloon.

I'd like to add to the above that it seems highly improbable on the face of it that the American writer Dorothy Parker was in Oxford, or anywhere else in England, in the days of WWII. Although she did spend time in Europe in her ealier days, at the time in question she seems unlikely to have wanted to wander very far off from her martini at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, where she was a member of a somewhat self-appointed circle of "wits" that called itself "The Round Table." Nor, does it seem likely that she would ever have sought out the company of a group such as The Inklings even if she had been in Oxford at the time. Not that she wouldn't have had the nerve to try to break into the conversations of an exclusive gathering of men in an English pub.

As a writer, she is, in my opinion, in every way Dorothy Sayer's inferior. I haven't read that much of her work, but enough of it to know that her reputation as a great "wit" is a little bit undeserved. One of her most often quoted "witticisms" is this little bit of verse:

I'd rather flunk my Wasserman test
Than read a poem by Edgar Guest.

It was also she who once said, of an Ivy League college ball, "If all the debutantes attending were laid end-to-end...I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

You can judge for yourself how "witty" this kind of stuff truly is.

ewww, kind of vulgar...
Actually the author of the biography says that Tolkien found Sayer's work vulgar. hmm
Anyway thanks Maiku, your research helped me immencely. I will leave Dorothy Parker, I mean Sayers, well who cares. (people will be reading the book to learn about Tolkien)
Alsi I am sorry I am not that responsive and talkative recently but I am working full time job for a month already and additionally the translation help and some English tuition etc etc so I am pretty busy (but very happy to have a job... for now)

Yes, Michal, it has been alleged that Tolkien found Sayer's work "vulgar." But certainly not in the sense that he would have found Dorothy Parker's wit "vulgar." He reportedly just wasn't very enthusiastic about the redeeming social value of her detective novels.

C.S. Lewis is on record as denying any such claim, and says that both he and Tolkien considered Dorothy Sayers a good friend. C.S. Lewis also said, though, that even though she was a good friend to both, she never even knew of the weekly gatherings of the Inklings at the Oxford pub called The Eagle and Child (but renamed by them The Bird and Baby).

This was Lewis's recollection, anyhow. It's entirely possible that Dorothy Sayers spotted them there on one occasion and asked to sit in, but was politely turned away. Your author uses the word "legend" himself, which is a pretty good indication that the actual events were garbled some by this or that reteller of them. In any case, though, the main facts in the case, if there are any, fit Dorothy Sayers well, but Dorothy Parker hardly at all.

That's settled then. Thanks!