Margaret Alexander Edwards (October 23, 1902 – April 19, 1988) was an American educator and librarian who was at the forefront of the movement for young adult services in the 20th century.

[2] As a teenager, she attended Trinity University, in Waxahachie, Texas, gaining the education and skills necessary to become a Latin teacher after graduating in 1922.

[3] In 1932, Margaret Edwards was hired by Joseph L. Wheeler, director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, to begin training as a librarian's assistant.

At that time, library services for young adults were already taking root in other parts of the country, with women like Jean Roos and Mabel Williams heading up the movement.

[4] At Enoch Pratt, Edwards's first position, under the direct supervision of Pauline McCauley, involved handling the small collection of young adult fiction tucked away at the back of the Popular materials section.

It was there she realized that she needed to have a better knowledge of literature herself if she wanted to cultivate the minds of young people, and she began to read avidly.

She felt that to be an adequate YA librarian, one “must read widely and constantly to be able to recommend with assurance books for the slow, the gifted, those with special interests and those with no interests.”[6] Thus, she established a training regimen in which all of her assistants were required to read ten titles from Books for the Teen Age, a list put together by the New York Public Library.

[15] The Alex Awards, presented by YALSA annually to 10 outstanding works of young adult literature and named after Edwards, are another project funded by the trust.