Mutual Admiration Society

An enjoyable anthem to friendship – Hephzibah Anderson * Observer *It is a tribute to that precious but still unsung thing: the loving bond between female friends, based on intellectual exchange and deep affection – Charlotte Higgins * Guardian *Hugely enjoyable … Modern-day readers can thank the ambitious, complicated, funny, brave women of the Mutual Admiration Society – Anna Carey * Sunday Business Post *Rich and careful … [Mutual Admiration Society] excavates the social and emotional context of the lives of four indomitable women with painstaking affection; it is as valuable as it is enjoyable – Sophie Read * TES *Well-written and fascinating, it’s equally successful as a biography and social history – Jake Kerridge * Sunday Express *Written with humour and insight, this is the fascinating group biography of Dorothy Sayers and five friends who formed a writing group at Somerville College Oxford in 1912 … This fine celebration of female friendship and early feminism reflects how far we have travelled since the post-Edwardian era * The Lady *A blend of group biography and social history, Mutual Admiration Society tells a quintessentially English story – Francis Wilson * The Times *Mo Moulton shows [Dorothy L.] Sayers setting out in Gaudy Night, her most psychologically astute and least conventional novel, to present her own philosophy of women’s intrinsic intellectual equality … Moulton’s book sheds new light on Sayers’s evolution as a writer, showing how some of her best work occurred in collaboration with her friend Muriel St. Clare Byrne * The New Yorker *This lively, rigorous, and surprising history of Dorothy L. Sayers and her circle is a clear-eyed, optimistic look at a particularly critical stage in the evolution of feminism * Kristen Roupenian, author of Cat Person And Other Stories *

Deeply researched, beautifully written

Mo Moulton is an established author and commentator on twentieth-century British history, and currently a senior lecturer in the history department of the University of Birmingham. Their previous book was the runner-up for the Royal History Society’s 2015 Whitfield Prize. They live in Derbyshire.