Marie Belloc Lowndes


Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes, who wrote as Marie Belloc Lowndes, was a prolific English novelist, and sister of author Hilaire Belloc.
Active from 1898 until her death, she had a literary reputation for combining exciting incidents with psychological interest. Three of her works were adapted for the screen: The Lodger, Letty Lynton, and The Story of Ivy. Additionally, The Lodger was adapted as a 1940 radio drama and 1960 opera.

Personal life

Born in Marylebone, London and raised in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, Belloc was the only daughter of French barrister Louis Belloc and English feminist Bessie Parkes. Her younger brother was Hilaire Belloc, whom she wrote of in her last work, The Young Hilaire Belloc. Belloc's paternal grandfather was the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was the theologian/philosopher Joseph Priestley. Her mother died in 1925, 53 years after her father.
In 1896, Belloc married Frederick Sawrey A. Lowndes.

Career

She published a biography, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales: An Account of His Career, in 1898. From then on novels, reminiscences and plays appeared at the rate of one per year until 1946. She produced over forty novels in all - mainly mysteries, well-plotted and on occasion based on real-life crime, though she herself resented being classed as a crime writer.
Her mother died in 1925, fifty-three years after her father. In the memoir, I, too, Have Lived in Arcadia, published in 1942, she told the story of her mother's life, compiled largely from old family letters and her own memories of her early life in France. A second autobiography Where love and friendship dwelt appeared posthumously in 1948.
Ernest Hemingway praised her insight into female psychology, revealed above all in the situation of the ordinary mind failing to cope with the impact of the extraordinary.
Eric Partridge noted a rare awkwardness on her part in the following passage: "There stood, a slight, white-clad figure, in the bright circle of light cast by one of the lamps which was still alight, of the car from which she had been flung".

Death

Belloc died 14 November 1947 at the home of her elder daughter, Countess Iddesleigh in Eversley Cross, Hampshire, and was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles, where she had spent her youth.

Adaptations

Film

is a 1960 opera by Phyllis Tate, based on the 1913 novel

Radio