Belloc Lowndes (Mrs [Marie]) The Lodger

London, The Readers Library…, [1927].

Readers Library movie tie-in edition. Small 8vo. Original gilt-stamped red cloth. Dust-jacket.

The novel, expanded in 1913 from a magazine story, is the great Jack the Ripper book written at one remove: the Buntings, genteel ex-servants sliding toward destitution, take in a soft-spoken gentleman lodger just as “The Avenger” begins murdering women in the London fog, and Mrs Bunting’s slow, unspeakable suspicion does the work a hundred crime scenes couldn’t. This little Readers Library volume earns its place for the film it advertises: Hitchcock’s 1927 The Lodger, starring Ivor Novello – the picture Hitchcock himself called the first true Hitchcock film.