Her critical analyses of Dante were popular and influential among scholars and the general public, although there has been some criticism that she overstressed the comedic side of his writing to make him more popular. As early as 1929 Sayers had produced an adaptation�from medieval French�of the poem Tristan by Thomas of Britain, and in 1946 she began to produce translations of Dante, firstly the four Pietra canzoni then, from 1948, the canticas of the Divine Comedy.
During the Second World War through these plays, and other works like The Wimsey Papers (1939â�∴0) and Begin Here: A War-Time Essay (1940), Sayers 'offered her countrymen a stirring argument for fighting', according to her biographer, Catherine Kenney. Some of her plays were broadcast on the BBC, others performed at the Canterbury Festival and some in commercial theatres.
Towards the end of the 1930s, and without explanation, Sayers stopped writing crime stories and turned instead to religious plays and essays, and to translations.
