Mutual Admiration Society

How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World For Women

In the autumn of 1912, a group of young women founded a writing group at Somerville College, Oxford, that changed their lives — and forged a path for generations of ambitious women to come. They called themselves the 'Mutual Admiration Society' to prevent anyone else from calling them that first. Smart, bold, serious, and funny, these women were also sheltered and chaperoned, barred from receiving degrees despite taking classes and passing exams. But within a few short years, World War I rapidly expanded the rights and opportunities available to women, and in 1920 members of the MAS returned to Oxford to receive full degrees, part of the first group of women to have this honor.

Mutual Admiration Society follows these six women as they navigate the complexities of adulthood, work, intimacy and sex in Interwar England: mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers, Shakespeare expert Muriel St. Clare Byrne, birth control advocate and one of the first female Justices of the Peace Charis (Barnett) Frankenburg, teacher and theater company founder Dorothy Rowe, and journalist and science fiction writer Muriel 'Jim' Jaeger. They were the first generation to be told that they could have it all, but in practice, society still routinely insisted that women make a choice between head and heart. Bringing these women to vivid life, Moulton reveals how Dorothy L. Sayers and her pioneering friends from the Mutual Admiration Society fought their way into modernity.