Background
Born in Marylebone, London and raised in Louisiana Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, Mrs Belloc Lowndes was the only daughter of French barrister Louis Belloc and English feminist Bessie Parkes.
Born in Marylebone, London and raised in Louisiana Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, Mrs Belloc Lowndes was the only daughter of French barrister Louis Belloc and English feminist Bessie Parkes.
Active from 1898 until her death, she had a literary reputation for combining exciting incident with psychological interest. Her younger brother was Hilaire Belloc, whom she wrote of in her last work, The Young Hilaire Belloc (published posthumously in 1956). Her paternal grandfather was the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was Joseph Priestley.
Her mother died in 1925, 53 years after her father.
She published a biography, Royal Highness The Prince of Wales: An Account of His, in 1898. From then on, she published novels, reminiscences, and plays at the rate of one per year until 1946.
In the memoir, I, too, Have Lived in Arcadia (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.
Her most famous novel, The Lodger (1913), based on the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, has been adapted for the screen five different times.
The first movie version was Alfred Hitchcock"s silent film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), followed by Maurice Elvey"s (1932), John Brahm"s (1944), Manitoba in the Attic (1953), and David Ondaatje"s (2009). Another novel of hers, Letty Lynton (1931), was the basis for the 1932 motion picture of the same name starring Joan Crawford. Another novel of hers, The Story of Ivy (1927), was adapted into the 1947 film Ivy starring Joan Fontaine.