Margaret Ayer Barnes (April 8, 1886, Chicago, Illinois – October 25, 1967, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American playwright, novelist, and short-story writer.

Consisting mainly of young, single immigrant women with little to no academic background, the summer program offered courses in progressive education, liberal arts and economics.

Gilbert Miller produced it on Broadway with Cornell's husband Guthrie McClintic directing; the play ran for 207 performances.

Cornell next starred in a Broadway production of Dishonored Lady (1930), a play that Barnes wrote with Sheldon based on the famous case of Madeleine Smith.

[10] A 1936 lawsuit against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for copyright infringement claimed that the script MGM used for the motion picture Letty Lynton (1932) plagiarized material from the play Dishonored Lady by Edward Sheldon and Barnes.