Jessie Mackay (15 December 1864 – 23 August 1938) was a New Zealand poet, journalist, feminist and animal rights activist.

[3] In late 1921 Mackay travelled to Europe, and in January 1922 she attended the Irish Race Convention in Paris on behalf of the New Zealand Society for Self-Determination for Ireland.

[3] Mackay's two final volumes of poetry were published after this visit: The Bride of the Rivers (1926) and Vigil (1935).

The letter bore more than 300 signatures from New Zealand, Australia and England, and opened with: "In the literary history of our country there is no name more honoured than yours".

She was praised for having built a literary tradition in New Zealand, and for her "reforming zeal, which has expressed itself in a life-long allegiance to many causes".

[4] It was said by her contemporaries that she was "among the first of those who realised that to limit the feminine intellect to the sphere of the home would deprive society of a great creative and regenerative power".

In the early 1920s Mackay condemned animal experiments and vivisection as unethical in newspaper articles.