Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes (née Belloc; 5 August 1868 – 14 November 1947), who wrote as Marie Belloc Lowndes, was a prolific English novelist, and sister of author Hilaire Belloc.
Born in George Street, 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), a journalist.[1] They had one son and two daughters, the elder of whom married the Earl of Iddesleigh.[2]
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,[3] though she herself resented being classed as a crime writer.[4] She created the French detective Hercules Popeau, roughly contemporaneously to Agatha Christie's creation of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.[5][6]
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.[7]
Belloc died 14 November 1947 at the home of her elder daughter, the Countess Iddesleigh (wife of the third Earl) in Eversley Cross, Hampshire, and was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles, where she had spent her youth.[citation needed]
The Pulse of Life: a Story of a Passing World (1907, New York 1909)
The Uttermost Farthing (1908, New York 1910)
According to Meredith (1909)
Studies in Wives (1909: New York, 1910) Short stories
When No Man Pursueth: An Everyday Story (1910, New York 1911)
Jane Oglander (1911, New York 1911)
The Chink in the Armour (1912, New York 1912, London 1935 as The House of Peril). First published as a newspaper serial, The Daily Telegraph & Courier, August 1911
Vanderlyn's Adventure (New York 1931, London 1937 as The house by the sea)
Why Be Lonely? A Comedy in Three Acts", (1931 with F. S. A. Lowndes)
Jenny Newstead (London 1932, New York 1932). First published as a newspaper serial, Sunday Post, August 1928, as ‘’The Strange Case of Jenny Newstead’’.
Love is a Flame (1932)
The Reason Why (1932)
Dutchess Laura: further days of her life (New York 1933)
^Maida and Spornick, Patricia D. and Nicholas B. (1982). Murder She Wrote: A Study of Agatha Christie's Detective Fiction. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 88. ISBN978-0879722159.
^F. Kelleghan, 100 Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction (2001) p. 415