Frances Gray Patton

Mrs. Frances Gray Patton (March 19, 1906 – March 28, 2000) was an American short story writer and novelist. She is best known for her 1954 novel Good Morning Miss Dove.

She was born in Raleigh, North Carolina to Mr. Robert Lily, an editor for the Raleigh Times and Ms. Mary McRae, a writer and the first woman to enroll at the University of North Carolina. From childhood, Ms. Frances expressed an interest in writing. She began to pursue a writing career at the University of North Carolina where she held a playwriting fellowship. She was active in the theater and published her first play in the college magazine. Following her marriage to Dr. Lewis Patton, a professor at Duke University, Patton settled into her role as a faculty wife and raised three children, a son and twin daughters. She began to focus her writing on short stories and in 1945, she published her first story titled "A Piece of Bread." The story won a Kenyon Review Prize and was included in 1945 edition of the O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories.

During the next decade, Patton established a relationship with The New Yorker magazine and they would publish over two dozen of her stories. Her stories also appeared in such publications as Harper's, McCalls, The Saturday Review of Literature and Collier's Weekly. A collection of stories from the New Yorker comprised her first book, The Finer Things of Life, which was published in 1951. The book received praise from critics. Marge Lyon wrote in the Chicago Sunday Tribune that the stories were "whimsical in spots, faintly poignant in others, but lit with a glowing, humorous aura made up of bright observations, sparkles of wit, and diamond bright philosophy, shot with incandescent characterizations."

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