author
Frances Noyes Hart
1890–1943
A sharp, stylish American novelist and short-story writer, she found a wide audience in major magazines before winning lasting notice for The Bellamy Trial, an early courtroom suspense hit.
2 Audiobooks
Contact, and Other Stories
by Frances Noyes Hart
The Bellamy trial
by Frances Noyes Hart
About the author
Born Frances Newbold Noyes in August 1890, she grew up in a well-connected Washington, D.C., family and was educated in the United States and Europe. During World War I, she worked in France with the YMCA and later with the American Red Cross, experiences that became part of a life that moved easily between public affairs and literary work.
Her fiction appeared in magazines including Scribner’s, The Saturday Evening Post, and Ladies’ Home Journal. She is best remembered for The Bellamy Trial (1927), a legal mystery first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post that helped establish her reputation with readers who liked smart, fast-moving suspense.
She continued writing novels and short fiction through the 1920s and 1930s. Although not as widely read today as some of her contemporaries, her work still stands out for its polished storytelling and for its place in the early history of American crime and courtroom fiction.