During a second European sojourn in 1928, Newman began to suffer from serious vision problems. She returned to New York for treatment, and while seeing a series of neurologists was found unconscious in her hotel room on October 19. She died three days later, with the initial cause of death reported as a cerebral hemorrhage; later the cause was changed to a drug overdose. Newman left behind some unpublished works, including her first novel—a comedy of manners entitled "The Gold-Fish Bowl" (1921)—and a translation of short fiction by the French poet Jules Laforgue. The latter, her last completed project, was published posthumously not long after her death as "Six Moral Tales from Jules Laforgue". In 1929, her collected letters were published as "Frances Newman Letters" with a preface by Cabell. Newman was a satirical writer with an experimental streak, and a rare feminist voice in the Southern literature of her era. Cabell memorably described "the inexpressibly tired voice of Frances Newman speaking in shrewd malice very plaintively." Her novels are disguised morality tales or modern fables, and they shocked many Southern readers with their candid critique of the educational, social, and career restrictions that distorted the lives of women. As they were openly critical of Southern racism and patriarchal values, they were denounced by the group of writers known as the Southern Agrarians, who excluded her from their canon of Southern Renaissance writers. Newman's papers—including manuscripts, correspondence, a scrapbook, and miscellaneous printed matter—are held by the Georgia Institute of Technology.