Relation To Real Life
A section of the plot is autobiographical. The part about the Bohemian relationship between Harriet and Boyes was inspired by Dorothy L. Sayers' fraught relationship with fellow-author John Cournos. Cournos wanted her to ignore social mores and live with him without marriage, but she wanted to marry and have children. After a year of agony between 1921 and 1922, she learned that Cournos had claimed to be against marriage only to test her devotion, and she broke off with him.
Following this Sayers became involved in another relationship which resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. In 1924–25, in the period of her life following the delivery, Sayers wrote eleven letters to John Cournos about their unhappy relationship, her relationship with Bill White, and that with her son. The letters are now housed at Harvard University. Both Sayers and Cournos eventually fictionalized their experience: Sayers in Strong Poison, published in 1930, and Cournos in The Devil is an English Gentleman, published in 1932.
Read more about this topic: Strong Poison
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