Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes, (1868 - 1947), was a prolific English novelist. Active from 1898 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 of 1888, 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), followed by Maurice Elvey's in 1932, John Brahm's in 1944, Man in the Attic in 1953, and David Ondaatje's in 2009. 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 younger brother was Hilaire Belloc, whom she wrote of in her last work The Young Hilaire Belloc (published posthumously in 1956). Her paternal grandfather was the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc and her maternal great-great-grandfather was Joseph Priestley. In 1896 she married Frederick Sawrey A. Lowndes (1868-1940). In this book: The Lodger The Story of Ivy The End of Her Honeymoon Studies in love and in terror The Chink in the Armour The Uttermost Farthing From Out the Vasty Deep