Marie Belloc Lowndes

Biography

Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947) was a British-French novelist and playwright, best known for The Lodger (1913), her fictional account of Jack the Ripper. Born in London to a French father and English mother (sister of Hilaire Belloc), she grew up bilingual and began writing in her teens. The Lodger, inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders, became her most famous work and was adapted multiple times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927. She wrote over forty novels, many exploring crime, psychology, and the darker aspects of domestic life.