Stella M. Francis

Stella M. Francis is credited as the author of several Camp Fire Girls novels from the late 1910s. Project Gutenberg lists works including Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes, Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains, and Campfire Girls' Outing, and the text of Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains shows it was published in 1918 by M. A. Donohue & Company.

Her fiction belongs to the lively girls' adventure tradition of the period: camp life, travel, teamwork, and a steady sense of problem-solving drive the stories. In Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains, for example, the setting mixes holiday atmosphere, outdoor action, and suspense, giving a good sense of the kind of spirited storytelling associated with her name.

Not much confirmed personal information about Francis is easy to find today, which makes her an unusually shadowy figure compared with many better-documented writers of her era. What is clear is that her Camp Fire Girls books have endured through public-domain preservation and continue to find new readers and listeners.