Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Marie Belloc Lowndes
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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.
The work has been consistently admired. On its appearance the editor of The Spectator praised it for wonderful mastery of the borderland of the natural and the supernatural,
Greenfield, John R., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 159. Gale Research.
On the basis of this piece, Marie Belloc Lowndes
felt in 1946 that if the circumstances of Cornish's life had been different she too might have become a famous writer.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan.
36
Literary responses
E. M. Delafield
Marie Belloc Lowndes
, a Roman Catholic, observed in late 1945 that EMD
's early anti-Catholic suffered from a failure of realism, being filled with fantastic imaginary figures of the old Catholic world.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus.
Lowndes, Diaries 267
Literary responses
Evelyn Underhill
Marie Belloc Lowndes
thought this novel and The Grey World had a quality of poetical beauty no writer has since attained. She deplored a later slighting reference to these novels, and liked them better than...
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...
Literary responses
Mary Augusta Ward
Critically, MAW
has not fared well since her death, despite her immense popularity in her lifetime and the seriousness with which her contemporaries read her. She was quickly cast as more Victorian than Edwardian...
Literary responses
Patricia Wentworth
The Gazette awarded PW
a prize of 250 guineas for her work.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
77
Marie Belloc Lowndes
, reviewing for the Times Literary Supplement, remarked that the Dickens
of A Tale of Two Cities had...
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
Literary responses
Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
In one of the many tributes published at the time of her death in 1934, friend and writer Marie Belloc Lowndes
(daughter of feminist Bessie Rayner Parkes
) said that CADSwrote certain remarkable novels...
Literary responses
Rebecca West
Marie Belloc Lowndes
considered this one of the best critical books in the language.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus.
217
Literary responses
Rhoda Broughton
In a lamentable
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus.
217
article on the death of Virginia Woolf
, Hugh Walpole
accused literary ladies of acting like priestesses engaged in throwing fragrant incense on their own altars. The first name he mentions...
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
Frances Hodgson Burnett
FHB
was a focus of media attention—occasionally hostile but often flattering—throughout her career. The title of Marie A. Belloc
's interview Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. A Famous Authoress at Home (in the Idler, 9, 1896)...
Literary responses
Julia Frankau
Marie Belloc Lowndes
thought this a strange, powerful story, but liked it less than some of JF
's earlier work.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan.
57
The Times obituary on JF
referred to this novel's brilliant portrait and caricature of...
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...
