Enid Mary Starkie CBE (18 August 1897 – 21 April 1970), was an Irish literary critic, known for her biographical works on French poets.

When she was two years of age her father accepted the post of Resident Commissioner of Education for Ireland.

Cora had been a pupil of the French pianist and composer Raoul Pugno, and Enid learnt to play the piano, going on to win second medal for two years in succession at Feis Ceoil, the annual music festival in Dublin.

In 1951 she campaigned successfully to have the quinquennially elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford be a practising poet rather than a critic.

She also campaigned successfully for W. H. Auden (1956), Robert Graves (1961), and Edmund Blunden (1966) in subsequent elections for the Chair, leading one critic to complain that, "This was a serious academic affair until Dr. Starkie turned it into something like the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.

An article in Time magazine portrayed her as "a brilliant Rimbaud scholar who pub-crawls about Oxford in bright red slacks and beret while smoking cigars.