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Barcelona. 18 cm. 237 p. Encuadernación en tapa blanda de editorial ilustrada.. Este libro es de segunda mano y tiene o puede tener marcas y señales de su anterior propietario.
250 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
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About the author
Marie Belloc Lowndes
239 books69 followersMarie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes, née Belloc (5 August 1868 – 14 November 1947), was a prolific English novelist.
Active from 1898 until her death, she had a literary reputation for combining exciting incident with psychological interest. Two of her works were adapted for the screen.
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). Her mother died in 1925, 53 years after her father.
She published a biography, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales: An Account of His Career, in 1898. From then on, she published novels, reminiscences, and plays at the rate of one per year until 1946. In the memoir, I, too, Have Lived in Arcadia (1942), she told the story of her mother's life, compiled largely from old family letters and her own memories of her early life in France. A second autobiography Where love and friendship dwelt, appeared posthumously in 1948.
She died 14 November 1947 at the home of her elder daughter, Countess Iddesleigh (wife of the third Earl) in Eversley Cross, Hampshire, and was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles, where she spent her youth.
(from Wikipedia)
Active from 1898 until her death, she had a literary reputation for combining exciting incident with psychological interest. Two of her works were adapted for the screen.
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). Her mother died in 1925, 53 years after her father.
She published a biography, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales: An Account of His Career, in 1898. From then on, she published novels, reminiscences, and plays at the rate of one per year until 1946. In the memoir, I, too, Have Lived in Arcadia (1942), she told the story of her mother's life, compiled largely from old family letters and her own memories of her early life in France. A second autobiography Where love and friendship dwelt, appeared posthumously in 1948.
She died 14 November 1947 at the home of her elder daughter, Countess Iddesleigh (wife of the third Earl) in Eversley Cross, Hampshire, and was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles, where she spent her youth.
(from Wikipedia)
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April 12, 2015Talk about obscure novels! This one is so obscure that I had to enter it into the Goodreads database myself.
Everyone knows Marie Belloc Lowndes for her novel The Lodger, but with a bit of digging I discovered and bought a copy of her Letty Lynton written in 1932. As with The Lodger, Lowndes based this novel on a true crime, this time the story of Madeleine Smith, a young woman who found herself standing in the dock in Glascow in 1857 accused of a scandalous murder. At the same time, while Letty Lynton doesn't have that keen psychological edge Lowndes gave to The Lodger, it is still a book worth reading, if for no other reason, for the eye-popping ending that came out of the blue as a total surprise.
[As an aside, this novel (also as was the case with The Lodger) was made into a movie, this one starring Joan Crawford and Robert Montgomery. Sadly the movie is out of circulation, as I discovered when I went to try to buy a copy; it has something to do with legal rights, but all I can hope for now is that TCM will run it again some day.]
Bringing Madeleine Smith's story more up to date and moving it out of Glascow, Lowndes' novel is set in the small English town of Thark. The novel's focus is on the somewhat sheltered 18 year-old daughter of a millionaire, Letty Lynton. Among Letty's many traits, she is pampered, shallow, at odds with her mother (for whom the sun rises and sets in Letty's older brother) and yet she is so beautiful that men are drawn to her like bees to honey. Sadly, one of these men, wholly unsuitable for Letty's station, gets it into his head (after being led on shamefully by young Letty, who has a habit of doing that sort of thing) that the two are engaged to be married, and constantly pressures Letty to allow him to meet her family. Things take a terrible turn when our young darling is introduced into London society and becomes the object of a respected lord's affection -- the Lynton family is ecstatic but what they do NOT know is that Letty's future and indeed, the reputation of the entire Lynton family is in jeopardy.
Even though this novel may sound like a work of 1930s chick-lit, it is actually anything but. At first I was wondering if this novel was going to go anywhere other than Letty's ongoing dalliances with men, but the author didn't let me down. The beauty of this novel is once again on the psychological side -- while not as suspenseful or disturbing as Lowndes' The Lodger, the author does a fantastic job of having Letty repeatedly dig herself into a quagmire of her own creation from which there literally may be no escape.
While written in the 1930s, and probably only satisfying to readers within a certain niche, it is still a very good crime novel and above all, a fine character study, which seems to be the author's forte. I would recommend it to readers of English crime novels, to readers of interwar-period British fiction, and to anyone who may be interested in the works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. If the opportunity ever arises to read this book, I guarantee that you'll discover one of the best and most appropriate endings to ever find its way into a crime novel, which for me seems to be ever more of a rarity these days.
Everyone knows Marie Belloc Lowndes for her novel The Lodger, but with a bit of digging I discovered and bought a copy of her Letty Lynton written in 1932. As with The Lodger, Lowndes based this novel on a true crime, this time the story of Madeleine Smith, a young woman who found herself standing in the dock in Glascow in 1857 accused of a scandalous murder. At the same time, while Letty Lynton doesn't have that keen psychological edge Lowndes gave to The Lodger, it is still a book worth reading, if for no other reason, for the eye-popping ending that came out of the blue as a total surprise.
[As an aside, this novel (also as was the case with The Lodger) was made into a movie, this one starring Joan Crawford and Robert Montgomery. Sadly the movie is out of circulation, as I discovered when I went to try to buy a copy; it has something to do with legal rights, but all I can hope for now is that TCM will run it again some day.]
Bringing Madeleine Smith's story more up to date and moving it out of Glascow, Lowndes' novel is set in the small English town of Thark. The novel's focus is on the somewhat sheltered 18 year-old daughter of a millionaire, Letty Lynton. Among Letty's many traits, she is pampered, shallow, at odds with her mother (for whom the sun rises and sets in Letty's older brother) and yet she is so beautiful that men are drawn to her like bees to honey. Sadly, one of these men, wholly unsuitable for Letty's station, gets it into his head (after being led on shamefully by young Letty, who has a habit of doing that sort of thing) that the two are engaged to be married, and constantly pressures Letty to allow him to meet her family. Things take a terrible turn when our young darling is introduced into London society and becomes the object of a respected lord's affection -- the Lynton family is ecstatic but what they do NOT know is that Letty's future and indeed, the reputation of the entire Lynton family is in jeopardy.
Even though this novel may sound like a work of 1930s chick-lit, it is actually anything but. At first I was wondering if this novel was going to go anywhere other than Letty's ongoing dalliances with men, but the author didn't let me down. The beauty of this novel is once again on the psychological side -- while not as suspenseful or disturbing as Lowndes' The Lodger, the author does a fantastic job of having Letty repeatedly dig herself into a quagmire of her own creation from which there literally may be no escape.
While written in the 1930s, and probably only satisfying to readers within a certain niche, it is still a very good crime novel and above all, a fine character study, which seems to be the author's forte. I would recommend it to readers of English crime novels, to readers of interwar-period British fiction, and to anyone who may be interested in the works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. If the opportunity ever arises to read this book, I guarantee that you'll discover one of the best and most appropriate endings to ever find its way into a crime novel, which for me seems to be ever more of a rarity these days.
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