The English writer Joseph Hilaire Peter Belloc was born in Celle Saint-Cloud, France on 27 July 1870. His mother was an English citizen, and the family moved to England when Belloc's French father died. Belloc attended the Oratory School in Edgbaston, County of Warwick, under John Henry Cardinal Newman from 1880-1887. After Belloc finished school, he returned to France to complete his compulsory military service.

After a brief stay in the United States, Belloc returned to England in 1893 to attend Balliol College, Oxford. In 1896 he completed his degree with first class honors in history. That same year he married an American, Elodie Hogan, with whom he had five children: three sons and two daughters.

Belloc began his literary career with Verses and Sonnets (1895). He next published The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896), a collection of nonsense verse that was so popular it sold out in four days. Belloc then produced a series of biographies which included Danton (1899) and Robespierre (1901). In 1902 he published Path to Rome, which is perhaps his most representative work for its combination of Belloc's love for travel, as well as his fierce Roman Catholicism. It recounts Belloc's journey on foot from Toul, France to Rome, Italy.

Belloc became a British citizen in 1902, and in 1906 he was elected to the House of Commons as the representative for South Salford, a seat which he held until 1910. He left his political career to pursue journalism, founding the political journal, New Witness, with G.K. Chesterton. His political broadsides written with Chesterton and his brother, Cecil, were popularly known as the "Chesterbellocs." Belloc also served as editor of Land and Water, a journal devoted to the progress of the war, from 1914 to 1920.

Elodie Belloc died in 1914, and Belloc's eldest son, Louis was killed in 1918 while serving in World War I. Belloc's youngest son, Peter, a captain in the Royal Marines, died in World War II.

Belloc was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great in 1934 by Pope Pius XI for his devotion to Catholicism as a writer. That same year, he was also awarded an honorary Master of Arts from Oxford University.

Belloc published prolifically over the course of his life. He authored 153 books of essays, fiction, history, biography, and poetry, as well as numerous articles for various periodicals. He continued to travel extensively until suffering a stroke in 1942. On July 12, 1953, Belloc accidentally fell into his fireplace while sleeping beside it. He was badly burned and died soon afterward on July 16, 1953.

A more complete biographical sketch on Hilaire Belloc is available in the Burn Library's Reading Room, along with a detailed chronology of Belloc's life and travels, as well as a bibliography of his principal works.