Marie Bellow Lowndes is one of the lesser-known Golden Age Mystery authors.
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About Marie Belloc Lowndes
Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes, known as Marie Belloc Lowndes, was a prolific English novelist and sister of author Hilaire Belloc. She was born on August 5, 1868, in Marylebone, London, England, and died on November 14, 1947, in Eversley Cross, Hampshire, England.
She was active from 1898 until her death and had a literary reputation for combining exciting incidents with psychological interest. She is best known for her murder mysteries, which were often based on actual murder cases. 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).
In 1896, she married Frederick Sawrey A. Lowndes. She published a biography, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales: An Account of His Career, in 1898. From then on, novels, reminiscences, and plays appeared at the rate of one per year until 1946. She produced over forty novels in all.
Her numerous works, spanning the first 40 years of the 20th century, include a series featuring the detective Hercules Popeau and an autobiography, I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia (1941). She was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles, where she had spent her youth.
Bibliography
Standalone Novels
- The Philosophy of the Marquise (1899)
- The Heart of Penelope (1904)
- The Uttermost Farthing (1908)
- Love’s Revenge (1909)
- The Pulse of Life (1909)
- When No Man Pursueth (1910)
- The Chink in the Armour / The House of Peril (1912)
- Mary Pechell (1912)
- The End of Her Honeymoon (1913)
- The Lodger (1913)
- Good Old Anna (1915)
- The Red Cross Barge (1916)
- Love and Hatred (1917)
- Told in Gallant Deeds (1917)
- Out of the War? / The Gentleman Anonymous (1918)
- From Out the Vasty Deep (1920)
- The Lonely House (1920)
- What Timmy did (1921)
- The Terriford Mystery (1924)
- Bread of Deceit / Afterwards (1925)
- The Chianti Flask (1925)
- What Really Happened (1926)
- The Story of Ivy (1927)
- Thou Shalt Not Kill (1927)
- Cressida: No Mystery (1928)
- Duchess Laura: Certain days of her life / The Duchess Intervenes(1929)
- One of Those Ways (1929)
- Letty Lynton / Dishonoured Lady (1931)
- Jenny Newstead (1932)
- Love is a Flame (1932)
- The Reason Why (1932)
- Vanderlyn’s Adventure / The House by the Sea (1932)
- Duchess Laura: Further Days of Her Life (1933)
- The Net Is Cast (1933) (as by Elizabeth Rayner)
- Another Man’s Wife (1934)
- Who Rides On a Tiger (1935)
- And Call It Accident (1936)
- The Injured Lover / The Second Key (1936)
- The Marriage Broker / Fortune of Bridget Malone (1937)
- Motive / Why it Happened (1938)
- Lizzie Borden (1939)
- Reckless Angel (1939)
- The Christine Diamond (1940)
- Before the Storm (1941)
- The Labours of Hercules (1943)
- What of the Night? (1943)
- Where Love and Friendship Dwelt (1943)
- The Merry Wives of Westminster (1946)
- A Passing World (1948)
Short Story Collections
- Studies in Wives (1910)
- Studies in Love and Terror (1913)
- The Price of Admiralty (1915)
- Why They Married (1923)
- Some Men and Women (1925)
Plays
- The Key (1930)
- With All John’s Love (1930)
- Why Be Lonely? (1931)
- The Empress Eugenie (1938)
Non-Fiction
- The Art of Photography (1897)
- H.R.H., the Prince of Wales (1898)
- His Most Gracious Majesty, King Edward VII (1901)
- Edmond and Jules De Goncourt (1925)
- I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia (1941)
- The young Hilaire Belloc (1956)
- Diaries and Letters, 1911-47 (1971)
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