<!-- Deleted image removed: thumb|right| On board [[RMS Aquitania|The Aquitania, April 14, 1936. Corbis]] -->

Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes (née Belloc; 5 August 1868 – 14 November 1947) was an English novelist, and sister of author Hilaire Belloc. Active from 1898 until her death, she had a reputation for combining exciting incidents with psychological interest in her books. Four of her works were adapted for the screen: The Chink in the Armour (1912; adapted 1922), The Lodger (1913; adapted several times), Letty Lynton (1931; adapted 1932), and The Story of Ivy (1927; adapted 1947). The Lodger was also adapted as a 1940 radio drama and a 1960 opera.

Personal life

thumb|left|Cover of [[The Chink in the Armour]]

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.

Belloc's paternal grandfather was the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was the theologian/philosopher Joseph Priestley. Her father died in 1872 when she and her brother were very young. Her mother spent 53 years as a widow and died in 1925.

In 1896, Belloc married Frederick Sawrey A. Lowndes (1868–1940), a journalist. They had one son and two daughters, the elder of whom married the Earl of Iddesleigh. Unlike her brother she was a strong supporter of the women's suffrage movement. In 1913 she was the President of the Women Writers' Suffrage League which included men as members. She got on with her brother but it was remembered that he lent her £350 in 1914 to pay off her debts.

She produced over forty novels in all — mainly mysteries, well-plotted and on occasion based on real-life crimes, though she herself resented being classed as a crime writer. She created the French detective Hercules Popeau, maybe before Agatha Christie's creation of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Popeau appeared in two novels and a series of short stories, creating some confusion when both had works called "The Labours of Hercules".

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 in 1943.

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. and was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles, where she had spent her youth.

Adaptations

Film

  • Her most famous novel, The Lodger (1913), based on the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, has been adapted for the screen several times; the first version was Alfred Hitchcock's silent film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927).
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill (1927)
  • The Story of Ivy (1927, Garden City NY 1928)
  • Cressida: no mystery (1928, New York 1930)
  • Duchess Laura: certain days of her life (1929, New York 1933 as The duchess Intervenes)
  • One of Those Ways (1929) (a Hercules Popeau mystery)
  • Love's Revenge (1929)
  • The Key: A Love Drama in Three Acts (1930)
  • With All John's Love: A Play in Three Acts (1930)
  • Letty Lynton (1931, New York 1931) made into a film by MGM with Joan Crawford in 1932.
  • 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)
  • Another Man's Wife (1934, New York 1934)
  • The Chianti Flask (New York 1934, London 1935)
  • Who Rides on a Tiger (New York 1935, London 1936)
  • The Second Key (New York 1936, London 1939 as The injured lover)
  • And Call it Accident (New York 1936, London 1939 as And call it an accident)
  • The House by the Sea (1937)
  • The Marriage Broker (1937, New York 1937 as The fortune of Bridget Malone)
  • Motive (1938)
  • Empress Eugenie: a three-act play (New York 1938)
  • Motive (1938, New York 1938 as Why it happened)
  • Reckless Angel (New York 1939)
  • Lizzie Borden: A Study in Conjecture (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1939, London 1940)
  • The Christine Diamond (New York & London 1940)
  • Before the Storm (New York 1941)
  • What of the Night? (New York 1943)
  • The Labours of Hercules (1943)