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.
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Stella Benson
When Woolf heard of her death she wrote in her diary of her sense of loss. And now, so quickly, it is gone, what might have been a friendship. Trusty & patient & very sincere—I...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth von Arnim
This marriage produced in all five children: the first three, all girls, were born within the first three years. According to Marie Belloc Lowndes , EA retained her love and tenderness towards only one of...
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...
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 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, 1990.
197
But despite the fact that Ford was never legally divorced or remarried, he and...
Family and Intimate relationships Bessie Rayner Parkes
Around this period in her life, BRP ended a relationship with a suitor, her cousin Samuel Blackwell , who had persisted in seeking her hand in marriage for more than ten years. Her daughter classifies...
Family and Intimate relationships Bessie Rayner Parkes
Her daughter grew up to become the novelist Marie Belloc Lowndes .
Banks, Olive. The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists. New York University Press, 1985–2025, 2 vols.
She was born in 1868 and was christened Marie Adelaide Julie Elizabeth Renée Belloc (known in the family as Mary).
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 240. Gale Research, 2001.
240: 189
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan, 1941.
87
Family and Intimate relationships Julia Frankau
JF 's younger sister Eliza, later Aria , also became a writer; more than Julia, she needed to support herself. She was a journalist, brilliant and witty, the founder of the school of gay flippant...
Fictionalization Alice Meynell
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 Violet Trefusis
The following year Lowndes stayed with Trefusis at West Coker Manor.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus, 1971.
273
At this time VT nurtured her (often edgy) relationship with writer Nancy Mitford , who moved from England to Paris in April...
Friends, Associates Mary Agnes Hamilton
MAH knew and worked closely with the Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald , though her early intense admiration for him diminished with time. Up to the year after publishing her book on him (which was also...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth von Arnim
On her trips back to England EA made some important new friends, including Maude Stanley , a feminist interested in reforming London streetwalkers.
Usborne, Karen. "Elizabeth": The Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Bodley Head, 1986.
85
Stanley advised von Arnim extensively on her children's education and helped...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Charles
Combe Edge soon became a noted centre of religous, philanthropic, and social activity.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan, 1941.
343
Marie Belloc Lowndes , who stayed there for many weekends as a child with her mother, Bessie Rayner Belloc (formerly Parkes)
Friends, Associates Pamela Frankau
Her aunt Eliza Aria introduced the very young PF to many of her older, god-like friends: first of all actress Sybil Thorndike and writers Michael Arlen and Osbert Sitwell .
Frankau, Pamela. I Find Four People. I. Nicholson and Watson, 1935.
133-4
Later came John Van Druten
Friends, Associates Dorothy Whipple
Living in the north, DW remained outside London literary circles. She found the company of councillors and their wives rather dispiriting and seem[ed] to have so much of it (because of her husband's job).
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph, 1966.
40

Timeline

By 13 November 1886: Maxwell Gray (whose real name was Mary Gleed...

Women writers item

By 13 November 1886

Maxwell Gray (whose real name was Mary Gleed Tuttiet ) published her well-known and highly successful novel The Silence of Dean Maitland.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
3081 (1886): 631
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan, 1946.
151

By autumn 1896: French erotic writer Pierre Louÿs, already...

Writing climate item

By autumn 1896

French erotic writer Pierre Louÿs , already notorious for the lesbian Songs of Bilitis, 1895, printed at his own expense his best-known work, Aphrodite, about a courtesan in ancient Alexandria.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan, 1946.
31-2

2 July 1914: The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited...

Building item

2 July 1914

The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis , formally announced the arrival of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in art.
Wees, William C. Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde. University of Toronto Press, 1972.
19, 162-79, 213-27

January 1921: The Englishwoman, a monthly forum for serious...

Building item

January 1921

The Englishwoman, a monthly forum for serious feminist discussion, ceased publication in London.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
28

21 July 1945: Just before the general election, Marie Belloc...

National or international item

21 July 1945

Just before the general election, Marie Belloc Lowndes reported that empty houses in London were being requisitioned because of the housing shortage caused by bombing.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus, 1971.
260-1

Texts

Broughton, Rhoda, and Marie Belloc Lowndes. A Fool in Her Folly. Odhams, 1920.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. “A Marriage Under the Terror”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 435, p. 174.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. A Passing World. Macmillan, 1948.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Barbara Rebell. W. Heinemann, 1905.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus, 1971.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc, and Marie L. Shedlock. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, with Letters, and Leaves from their Journals. W. Heinemann, 1894, 2 vols.
Iddesleigh, Elizabeth Northcote, Countess of, and Marie Belloc Lowndes. “Foreword”. The Young Hilaire Belloc, P. J. Kenedy, 1956.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Good Old Anna. Hutchinson, 1915.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan, 1941.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. “Interplay”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 350, p. 309.
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.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Lizzie Borden. Hutchinson, 1940.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Love is a Flame. E. Benn, 1932.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. “Notes on New Foreign Books”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 414, p. 504.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. She Dwelt with Beauty. Macmillan, 1949.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. “Some French Gift Books”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 361, p. 467.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Studies in Love and in Terror. Methuen, 1913.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Studies in Wives. W. Heinemann, 1910.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Chink in the Armour. Methuen, 1912.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The End of her Honeymoon. Methuen, 1914.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Heart of Penelope. W. Heinemann, 1904.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Life and Letters of Charlotte Elizabeth, Princess Palatine. Chapman and Hall, 1889.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Lodger. Methuen, 1913.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan, 1946.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Philosophy of the Marquise. G. Richards, 1899.