Belle K. (Belle Kendrick) Abbott

Born in 1842, Belle Kendrick Abbott was an American novelist from Georgia whose best-known and apparently only published novel was Leah Mordecai (1875). She is usually identified as Isabella "Belle" Kendrick Abbott, and biographical sources place her roots in Georgia and later life in Atlanta.

Leah Mordecai is a coming-of-age story set in Charleston before the Civil War. Its Jewish heroine, family conflict, and interfaith tensions make it an unusual Southern novel for its time, and that distinct focus is a big part of why the book is still remembered.

Abbott died in 1893. Later references also note that she wrote a series of 1889 newspaper articles on the Cherokee in Georgia, suggesting a wider interest in regional history and culture beyond her fiction.