Doris Lessing & Miss Lydgate, by Ben Jeapes
Doris Lessing’s quote about accepting second-best being a sin, copied on the front cover of the most recent Christian Writer , generated a lot of conversation on the ACW pages. I wondered what she would make of Miss Lydgate. Miss Lydgate is an Oxford academic in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night , whose endless tinkering on her monolithic History of Prosody - with twelve different typefaces and labyrinthine footnotes - has become the stuff of legend. (‘“She’s suddenly thought of a new appendix.” “Oh no!” cried the Dean. “Alas, yes! …”’) When the proofs are finally delivered to the printers it is almost as much a matter of celebration for the Senior Common Room as the fact that Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey have identified the villain of the piece. (‘“I'm almost positive I heard a faint voice crying from the window about a footnote on page 97 - but I pretended not to hear.”’) I used to work in academic publishing and have met a great number of Miss Lydgates: ever revising, ...