Marie Belloc Lowndes

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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.
  • BirthName: Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Renée Julia Belloc
    Her many names were given in honour of various relatives and of her mother's friends Mary Merryweather and Adelaide Procter .
    Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan, 1941.
    87

  • Nickname: Mary
    Her English relations and many of her friends used the English form of her name, Mary.

  • Married: Lowndes
  • Pseudonyms: Philip Curtin; Elizabeth Rayner
    Her second pseudonym was borrowed from the birth name of her mother. It has caused occasional confusion in library cataloguing.

  • Indexed: Mrs Belloc Lowndes
    The appearance of her name in this form on her works caused some libraries to catalogue her as Lowndes, Belloc.
Photograph of the cover of "The Chink in the Armour" by Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1912. It is orange with black lettering ("Mrs. Belloc Lowndes"), and a large background circle of little red balls or beads.

Milestones

5 August 1868

MBL , the elder of two children, was born at 11 George Street, Marylebone, in lodgings, since her mother had returned from France for the birth but her grandmother did not want it to take place in her house.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan, 1941.
82

1913

MBL scored a slowly registering hit with The Lodger, coolly received at first but later the best-known of her novels, which is set in 1880s London and relates a mystery not unlike that of the notorious Jack the Ripper.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan, 1946.
171-2

14 November 1947

MBL died of stomach cancer at her home of her daughter Lady Iddesleigh , Parfetts House at Eversley Cross in Hampshire, having received the last sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church .
Iddesleigh, Elizabeth Northcote, Countess of et al. “List of Books by Mrs Belloc Lowndes, Foreword”. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947, edited by Susan Lowndes Marques and Susan Lowndes Marques, Chatto and Windus, 1971, pp. prelims, 1 - 3.
3

1956

MBL 's book about her brother 's early years, The Young Hilaire Belloc, appeared posthumously in the USA (edited by her daughter Elizabeth Iddesleigh ). It was never published in England.
Iddesleigh, Elizabeth Northcote, Countess of et al. “List of Books by Mrs Belloc Lowndes, Foreword”. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947, edited by Susan Lowndes Marques and Susan Lowndes Marques, Chatto and Windus, 1971, pp. prelims, 1 - 3.
prelims
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus, 1971.
217n2

Biography

Birth and Family

5 August 1868

MBL , the elder of two children, was born at 11 George Street, Marylebone, in lodgings, since her mother had returned from France for the birth but her grandmother did not want it to take place in her house.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan, 1941.
82

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