The Lodger

Marie Adelaide Lowndes, née Belloc, was a prolific English novelist. Active from 1904 until her death, she had a literary reputation for combining exciting incident with psychological interest. Her most famous novel, The Lodger (1913), based on the Jack the Ripper murders, has been adapted for the screen five different times; the first movie version was Alfred Hitchcock's silent film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927). Another novel of hers, Letty Lynton (1931), was the basis for the 1932 motion picture of the same name starring Joan Crawford. Born in Marylebone, London and raised in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, Mrs Belloc Lowndes was the only daughter of French barrister Louis Belloc and English feminist Bessie Parkes. Her brother was Hilaire Belloc. Her paternal grandfather was the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc and her maternal great-grandfather was Joseph Priestley. In 1896 she married Frederic Sawrey Lowndes. Her first novel, The Heart of Penelope, was published in 1904. From then on novels, reminiscences and plays came from her quill at the rate of one per year until 1946. In the novel, I, too, Have Lived in Arcadia, published in 1942, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes told the story of her mother's life, compiled largely from old family letters and her own memories of her early life in France. Her most famous novel is The Lodger, published in 1913. Based on the Jack the Ripper murders, it is about a London family who suspects that their upstairs lodger is a mysterious killer known as "The Avenger." The novel was the basis for five movie adaptions. The first was the silent film version The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927, followed by Maurice Elvey's in 1932, John Brahm's in 1944, Man in the Attic in 1953, and David Ondaatje's in 2009. She died November 14, 1947 at the home of her elder daughter, Countess Iddesleigh (wife of the third Earl) in Eversley Cross, Hampshire. She was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles, where she spent her youth.