Author. Blair Niles received notoriety as an American novelist and travel writer in the early 20th century, Born Mary Blair Rice, she was better known by the pen name of Blair Niles. The name Blair Niles was adopted in part from the surname of her second husband and an avid photographer, Robert Niles, Jr. Using the name “Mary Blair Beebe,” she authored with her first husband, noted marine biologist C. William Beebe, two travel books, “Two Birds in Mexico” and “Our Search for a Wilderness.” She published “Casual Wanderings in Ecuador” in 1923, “Colombia: Land of Miracles” followed in 1924, and “Black Haiti” in 1926; her husband was the photographer for these publications. In 1926 she visited the notorious Devil's Island, a penal colony in French Guiana, recording the life of a prisoner, René Belbenoit. Belbenoit had been sentenced for several years for stealing money and jewelry from his employer, and later escaped to the United States. In this time period, Belbenoit had three books written about his prison ordeal but Niles' was the only one written in English. In her 1928 best-selling biography about Belbenoit, “Condemned to Devil's Island: The biography of an Unknown Convict” she wrote about the ghastly conditions in the prison, which led to prison reforms after the book became a world-wide success. In 1929 the black and white, pre-code Hollywood film, “Condemned,” was an adaption of her best-selling book. Besides being released in English speaking-countries, the film was released in Spanish, German, and Italian. With the setting in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, her 1931 book, “Strange Brother,” had a homosexual hero, was republished in 1991, and her only work in that genre. Other books worth mentioning are “A Journey in Time: Peruvian Pageant,” which earned her the City of Lima's gold medal on the 117th anniversary of the independence of Peru in 1938; “The James: the Iron Gate to the Sea“ in 1939, which was about Virginia's James River and became part of the Farrar & Rinehart's "Rivers of America" series; and “Martha's Husband: An Informal Portrait of George Washington” in 1951. In 1941, she was the recipient of the Constance Lindsay Skinner Medal by the Women's National Book Association and the Booksellers' League. According to her obituary, she was one of the four founding members of the Society of Woman Geographers Pageant and honored with receiving the 1940 Gold Medal from the organization . Her parents, who were cousins from an old Colonial Virginia family, were Henry Crenshaw Rice and Maria Gordon Pryor, a member of the prestigious, political family of Pryor. Mainly educated at home with private tutors, she did a great deal of research prior to making her trips and writing her books. She died after having a stroke and had no children from either of her marriages.