Harriet Vane
| Harriet Deborah Vane | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Strong Poison (1930) |
| Last appearance | The Late Scholar (2013) |
| Created by | Dorothy L. Sayers |
| Portrayed by |
|
| Voiced by | Joanna David (2005) |
| Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Author of detective stories |
| Spouse(s) | Lord Peter Wimsey |
| Children | Three (possibly five) |
| Nationality | British |
Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957).
Vane, a mystery writer, initially meets Lord Peter Wimsey while she is on trial for poisoning her lover (Strong Poison). The detective falls in love with her and proposes marriage but she refuses to begin a relationship with him, traumatised as she is by her dead lover's treatment of her and her recent ordeal. In Have His Carcase, she collaborates with Wimsey to solve a murder but still finds him to be overbearing and superficial. She eventually returns his love (Gaudy Night) and marries him (Busman's Honeymoon).
Harriet Vane is the only daughter of a country doctor. She was an undergraduate at Shrewsbury College, Oxford (the location of which is given as the Balliol College Sports Grounds, now partly occupied by a residential annexe, on Holywell Street) and took a First in English. Her parents both died while she was quite young and she was left to make her own fortune at the age of 23. She has had some success as a writer of detective stories, living and socialising with other artists in Bloomsbury. She begins a relationship with Philip Boyes, a more literary but far less successful writer who professes not to believe in marriage, and she agrees to live with him without marrying. After a year of this arrangement, Boyes believes that she truly loves him and proposes marriage. Angered by his hypocrisy and aghast at being offered marriage as "a bad-conduct prize", Harriet breaks off the relationship.
Boyes dies soon afterwards of arsenic poisoning – the method Harriet had researched for her new book. She is arrested and tried for murdering Boyes. Wimsey comes to her rescue by proving who really poisoned Boyes.
After Harriet is acquitted, she remains quite notorious. Sales of her books skyrocket. Wimsey continues to pursue her romantically, but Harriet repeatedly declines marriage on the principle that gratitude is not a good basis for it. To relax, she takes a walking tour, during which she finds a corpse on a beach, adding to her notoriety. The press is naturally interested; Wimsey hastens to the scene, after receiving a tip from a journalist friend, to help shield Harriet from suspicion. The two investigate the death (when they are not romantically sparring) and unmask the murderer.
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