Gaudy Night is a captivating detective novel written in 1935 by acclaimed crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers and set in the fictional Oxford college of Shrewsbury. Yes, you read that right – I am about to tell you to pick up a book set in Oxford. You might be sighing at the thought of spending even your precious free time wandering through the streets of Oxford in your head, following characters who are also in the midst of a time-consuming degree. If you are, I don’t blame you!

At the same time, I hope I can convince you that it can be fun to immerse yourself in a fictionalised Oxford, far removed from your own assignments and deadlines, especially if it is accompanied by a vivid depiction of 1930s Oxford life and a dramatic mystery unfolding within college grounds. Moreover, for those in their final year (which technically includes me – a student on a one-year master’s course), the realisation that Oxford life is not forever might be starting to creep up on you, and you may be wondering if you might become homesick for university life once you leave the “City of Dreaming Spires.”

An Oxford mystery written by a former Somerville student

When a friend recently visited me in Oxford for the first time, I was surprised at how well she knew many of its oddities. She knew the college system, college rivalries and many college names by heart, and was uncannily familiar with sub fusc and formal dinners (especially for someone who had never attended one!). My friend revealed Gaudy Night as her source of knowledge, and promptly gifted me a copy so I could find out for myself how Oxford students fared 90 years ago.

The protagonist of Gaudy Night is Harriet Vale, a charismatic crime author and alumna of the all-female Shrewsbury College, who is invited to a college gaudy (alums celebration) several years after graduating. Having recently been caught up in a public scandal and wrongly accused of murder, she hesitates – what if her former fellow students and the dons think ill of her? To her surprise, however, everyone is glad to see her. Everything seems to be going well, until she receives an eerie poison-pen letter while staying at Shrewsbury, calling her a “dirty murderess.”

Harriet soon realises this is not an isolated case as similar letters and threats appear all over the college, addressed to various students or dons. It seems that the culprit must be within the college itself, and Harriet decides to utilise her experience as a crime writer to find and confront her. In the process, she interrogates her own stance on Oxford, academia, and women pursuing paid work.

Dorothy L. Sayers, who lived in Oxford herself, studied Modern Languages at Somerville College. She graduated in 1915 and received her official degree in 1920 as one of the very first women at Oxford University. Reading Gaudy Night, it is apparent that she knew the ins and outs of student life from her own experience. While this is the tenth book in her Lord Peter Wimsey series of detective novels, it can easily be read as a standalone, even without a knowledgeable friend to fill you in on the characters’ previous adventures.

Oxford student life 90 years ago

When reading Gaudy Night as a current student, it is easy to get caught up on the striking lack of college puffers in the detailed descriptions of characters’ attire, and to sympathise with the students who fret over having to wear their gowns for every dinner in college.

On the subject of dinner, Sayers’s descriptions conjure up a very different dinner situation to the one we are spoiled with today. During the stressful weeks of term, I often retreat to my room to curl up and watch a movie or to do some reading while eating dinner, deciding against a proper sit-down meal with my college friends or flatmates. Thankfully, we have a shared kitchen, my college hall offers takeout, and there are many options for inexpensive, ready-made food around the city. This was certainly not the case for students in Sayers’s time, who were expected to attend first hall and whose tutors would notice if they were repeatedly absent, as we learn from the novel.

Going for a quick nightly Tesco trip was not an option either – for multiple reasons. One is the absence of any of the omnipresent branches of Tesco during Sayers’s time as a student. Another was the possibility of a curfew for all students living on college grounds: a situation that would be hard to imagine today.

Not without wit, Sayers describes an undergraduate student who, too preoccupied with her studies to change into a proper outfit for hall and without a kitchen of her own, resorts to eating a singular egg in her room for dinner.

As it turns out, though, some things never change. Formal dinners become much too loud to understand the person across the table with alarming rapidity, repeatedly leaving you close to shouting while trying to make conversation. The last few weeks of term are unfailingly overshadowed by exhaustion as everyone tries to cram essay writing and society events into weeks already overflowing with lectures and study groups. And then there is the Oxford-specific lingo that both alienates visitors and creates a strange sense of belonging between everyone who knows how to pronounce “Magdalen.”

Sayers’s Gaudy Night is a great read, filled to the brim with eccentric characters, an intriguing mystery and nuanced philosophical debates sprinkled throughout it. Whilst I am unsure whether I would have enjoyed it quite as much without present-day Oxford as a point of comparison, the author’s precise understanding of interpersonal relationships and consideration of feminist debates allow for an enjoyable blend of mystery, history, and academic discourse.

Correction: Gaudy Night was set in the 1930s, not the 1910s. Article corrected 22/1/25.