The older sister of the writer Hilaire Belloc, Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868-1947) was herself famous as a novelist during her lifetime. She published dozens of works of fiction, many of them featuring crime and murder. Her best-known work, The Lodger, supposedly inspired by a story heard about Jack the Ripper, first appeared in book form in 1913 and has been made into a film five times, once by Alfred Hitchcock.
