Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

On board The Aquitania, April 14, 1936. © Corbis

Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes, née Belloc (5 August 1868 – 14 November 1947), was a prolific English novelist.

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 (1913 novel; numerous film adaptations), Letty Lynton (1931 novel; 1932 film adaptation), and The Story of Ivy (1927 novel; 1947 film adaptation). 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 (published posthumously in 1956). 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 (1868–1940).^[1]

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 came from her quill 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,^[2] though she herself resented being classed as a crime writer.^[3]

Her mother died in 1925, fifteen years before 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.^[4]

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”.^[5]

Death

Belloc died 14 November 1947 at the home of her elder daughter, Countess Iddesleigh (wife of the third Earl^[6]) in Eversley Cross, Hampshire, and was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles, where she spent her youth.

Adaptations

Film

• Her most famous novel, The Lodger (1913), based on the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, has been adapted for the screen multiple times; the first movie version was Alfred Hitchcock's silent film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927). The second film version was Maurice Elvey's (1932), followed by John Brahm's (1944), Man in the Attic (1953), and David Ondaatje's (2009).
• Her novel, Letty Lynton (1931), was the basis for the 1932 motion picture of the same name starring Joan Crawford.
• Her novel, The Story of Ivy (1927), was adapted into the film Ivy (1947) starring Joan Fontaine.

Opera

The Lodger (opera) is a 1960 opera by Phyllis Tate, based on the 1913 novel

Radio

• Hitchcock was also associated with a radio adaptation for CBS in 1940 that served as the first episode of the radio drama series, Suspense.

Bibliography

See also

References

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

• Works by Marie Belloc Lowndes at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes at Internet Archive
• Works by Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Marie Belloc Lowndes at the Internet Movie Database