Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Marie Belloc Lowndes
-
Standard Name: Lowndes, Marie Belloc
Birth Name: Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Renée Julia Belloc
Nickname: Mary
Married Name: Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Renée Julia Lowndes
Indexed Name: Mrs Belloc Lowndes
Pseudonym: Philip Curtin
Pseudonym: Elizabeth Rayner
During a career that spanned nearly fifty years from 1889, MBL
published journalism, biography, a guidebook, history for children, novels (mostly romances or thrillers), a book about actual crimes, and four late volumes of autobiography. Her books of crime and detection were her most successful. Her list of titles numbers more than seventy.
To many of her contemporaries (especially male contemporaries), AM
symbolised the perfection of Woman and Mother. Many descriptions of her suggest Woolf
's Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse. Coventry Patmore
and Francis Thompson
Friends, Associates
Katherine Mansfield
In the south of France KM
became quickly intimate in conversation with Marie Belloc Lowndes
, another writer twenty years her senior. A correspondence followed.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus.
216
Textual Production
Katherine Mansfield
Scholar Claire Tomalin
suspects that this refusal had to do with KM
's unacknowledged debt to Chekhov
in The Child-Who-Was-Tired.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Mansfield was, however, feeling discouraged about all her work. In February, with The Garden...
Literary responses
Katherine Mansfield
After Mansfield's death, Woolf
wrote in her diary: it seemed to me there was no point in writing. Katherine won't read it.
Gunn, Kirsty. “How the Laundry Basket Squeaked”. London Review of Books, Vol.
35
, No. 7, pp. 25-6.
25
KM
appears in episodes in more than one novel by her friend...
Publishing
Olivia Manning
She regarded this book as an exercise in learning how to sustain a long narrative.
English, Isobel, and Olivia Manning. “Introduction”. The Wind Changes, Virago, p. v - xvi.
ix
Marie Belloc Lowndes
, who was supportive and generous with praise of this book, also told OM
that her...
Literary responses
Lucas Malet
Two things about this novel gave offence initially and had a long-term effect on its reputation: its treating the nasty
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
topic of deformity, and its involving the hero emotionally with three women (his mother as...
Literary responses
Lucas Malet
In 1902 The Lucas Malet Birthday Book, compiled by G. Olivia Dethridge
, testified to LM
's market appeal at this stage of her career.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
In 1944 Marie Belloc Lowndes
listed her as among...
Travel
Rose Macaulay
RM
went on a two-week tour of Sicily with friends in 1931. She spent several months researching in Portugal in 1943, visiting Lisbon and Oporto. In Portugal she visited the one of Marie Belloc Lowndes
Literary responses
Vernon Lee
Marie Belloc Lowndes
, who knew VL
fairly well, felt out of sympathy with her frightening erudition and off-putting snobbery—but she was indignant at Anatole France
's caricature of Lee in Le lys rouge.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Where Love and Friendship Dwelt. Macmillan.
177
Leisure and Society
Margaret Kennedy
She belonged to, among other literary clubs, the Liberal Book Club
and the 30 Club, which consisted of a group of women writers who met for lunch at the Ritz Grill. Other members...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
Elsie Ford dropped her suit against the Daily Mirror when it paid her £350 in damages and published an apology.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
197
But despite the fact that Ford was never legally divorced or remarried, he and...
Literary responses
Violet Hunt
Sooner or Later received (perhaps excessively) high praise from a number of VH
's contemporaries. Marie Belloc Lowndes
(daughter of Bessie Rayner Parkes
) wrote in The Merry Wives of Westminster, 1946, that it...
Family and Intimate relationships
John Oliver Hobbes
JOH
had a number of intimate relationships with men, including Lord Robert Crewe
and George Nathaniel Curzon
, whose name was linked with hers before his marriage in 1895, and again in the very few...
Family and Intimate relationships
Matilda Hays
Marie Belloc Lowndes
, daughter of Bessie Rayner Parkes
, recalled MH
as a tall, handsome woman with a strongly featured face, very clever, and with a great deal of charm, particularly for other women...
Literary responses
Beatrice Harraden
Marie Belloc Lowndes
described this book for the Times Literary Supplement as a strangely poignant drama and likened it to Mary Shelley
's Frankenstein and Sir Walter Scott
's Waverley for its comparable ability to...
