I have called this collection of fugitive pieces “Unpopular Opinions,” partly, to be sure, because to warn a person off a book is the surest way of getting him to read it, but chiefly because I have evidence that all the opinions expressed have in fact caused a certain amount of annoyance one way and the other. Indeed, the papers called “Christian Morality,” “Forgiveness” and “Living to Work” were so unpopular with the persons who commissioned them that they were suppressed before they appeared: the first because American readers would be shocked by what they understood of it; the second because what the Editor of a respectable newspaper wanted (and got) was Christian sanction for undying hatred against the enemy; the third—originally intended for a Sunday evening B.B.C. “Postscript”—on the heterogeneous grounds that it appeared to have political tendencies, and that “our public do not want to be admonished by a woman.” With the exception of these, and the paper on “Dr. Watson’s Third Marriage,” all the items in the collection have either appeared as articles or been delivered as addresses at various times ranging from 1935 to 1945.

Speaking generally, the first section courts unpopularity by founding itself on theology and not on “religion.” The second will offend all those who are irritated by England and the English, all those who use and enjoy slatternly forms of speech, all manly men, womanly women, and people who prefer wealth to work. The third will annoy those who cannot bear other people to enjoy themselves in their own way.

Perhaps I should add a word about this third section. The game of applying the methods of the “Higher Criticism” to the Sherlock Holmes canon was begun, many years ago, by Monsignor Ronald Knox, with the aim of showing that, by those methods, one could disintegrate a modern classic as speciously as a certain school of critics have endeavoured to disintegrate the Bible. Since then, the thing has become a hobby among a select set of jesters here and in America. The rule of the game is that it must be played as solemnly as a county cricket match at Lord’s: the slightest touch of extravagance or burlesque ruins the atmosphere. The exercise has become a recreation; but those who like their recreations to exert a moral influence may take note of how easy it is for an unscrupulous pseudo-scholarship to extract fantastic and misleading conclusions from a literary text by a series of omissions, emendations and distortions of context. There are a number of literary biographies and works of criticism at present enjoying an undeserved popularity which have been perpetrated by precisely such methods—and not as a game. The final article, on “Aristotle and Detective Fiction” is, on the other hand, quite serious, scholarly and—I will venture to add—sound.

I have not tried to bring my opinions up to date, though where necessary I have added an indication of the time at which they were first uttered. Nor have I altered the rhythm of the spoken word, or expunged the occasional repetitions which are bound to occur in speeches and articles produced on divers occasions on one and the same subject. The gain would not be sufficient to offset the loss of spontaneity.

Dorothy L. Sayers.

1946.