Harriet Vane
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Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957).
Daughter of a country doctor and graduate of the fictional Shrewsbury College, Oxford (the location of which is given as the Balliol College Sports Grounds, now partly occupied by a residential annex, on Holywell Street), Vane is a writer of detective stories who is wrongly accused of the murder of her former lover Philip Boyes. While she is on trial (in Strong Poison), Lord Peter Wimsey comes to her rescue by proving who really poisoned Boyes. After a courtship that continues through Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night, and repeated proposals from Peter, the two marry in Busman's Honeymoon and move into a country residence, Talboys, a Tudor farmhouse Harriet had admired as a child and which Peter has given her as a wedding present, the location of which is given as somewhere in East Hertfordshire.
Thrones, Dominations, a novel started by Sayers and finished by Jill Paton Walsh, takes place, mainly at the Wimsey's Mayfair residence, shortly after they return from their honeymoon, with A Presumption of Death, written by Walsh, a novel in which Harriet takes a leading role, taking the story of the Wimsey family into the Second World War. The first of their children is born in the story "The Haunted Policeman," and by the time of the story "Talboys" they have three sons: Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey (born in October 1936), Roger Wimsey (born 1938), and Paul Wimsey (born 1940).
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[edit] Influences
Sayers consciously modelled Vane on herself, although perhaps not as closely as her fans (and even friends) sometimes thought. Both, however, were among the first generation of women to receive an Oxford education. Vane's relationship with Boyes – during which she agrees to live "in sin" with him on the basis of his claim not to believe in marriage and later, when he decides he wants to marry her after all, breaks off the relationship on account of his hypocrisy – is based on Sayers's love affair (1921-1922) with the author John Cournos (1881-1956), a Russian-born American Jew whose family emigrated to the U.S. when he was ten years old.
[edit] Portrayal in film, TV or theatre
Harriet Vane was portrayed by Harriet Walter in the 1987 BBC television adaptations of Strong Poison, Have his Carcase and Gaudy Night.
