Laura Joyce Bell (née Maskell;[1] 6 May 1854 – 30 May 1904[2]) was an English-American actress and contralto singer mostly associated with Edwardian musical comedy and light opera.

After beginning her career as Laura Joyce in concerts and theatre in Britain, she moved to the United States in 1872 where she earned good notices in the spectacular shows at Niblo's Garden.

Bell was born in London, the daughter of Maria Dalton Dauncey, a dramatic elocutionist and voice teacher (died 1917), and James Henry Maskell (1824–1897), a sometime theatrical agent and merchant.

From this early period until 1883, Bell appeared as Laura Joyce in London in a comic opera titled Mina and played the Count of Flanders in Cupid 'Mid the Roses and The Ring and the Keeper by John Pratt Wooler.

She soon participated in a British tour of a sketch presentation called Happy Hours of Fanciful Fun by Frank Green and Alfred Lee, which was followed by a season at the Theatre Royal, Manchester and an engagement with Dion Boucicault as a soubrette singer at Covent Garden.

[3] At Christmas 1871, she played Oberon in the prologue to The Children in the Wood at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the following year she toured with Howard Paul.

[6][7] In between, at Christmas 1875, she starred at the Boston Globe as Prince Amabel in Turko the Terrible, then appeared in concert with the Berger Family and Jules Levy.

The same year, she was with the McCaull Comic Opera Company at the Casino Theatre performing Manola in an English adaptation of Offenbach's La princesse de Trébizonde, and that November, with Rice's Opera Bouffe Company, she appeared at the Bijou as Diana, then Juno, in Orpheus and Eurydice, Max Freeman's adaptation of Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers.

Other roles during this period included Bathilde in Olivette, Donna Scolastica in Heart and Hand, Lady Clare in Nell Gwynne.

[1] In 1886 she played Lady Prue, with her husband as Matt o' the Mill, in McCaull's presentation at the Star Theatre of Audran's Indiana and Tronda in a successful English adaptation of Von Suppé's The Bellman.