Margaret Bryant (15 April 1870[1]–14 February 1942)[2] was an English writer, literary "devil", and contributor to the British Encyclopædia Britannica.
[4] A colleague later wrote that:When her spare little figure came almost apologetically round the half-opened door there was always a sheaf of manuscript under her arm, a pencil in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Even at the age of 71 Margaret Bryant was still in harness as the mainstay of the Information Department of Chatham House, and it is the plain sad truth that she literally died in its service.
The Institute is indebted to her for some of its best-known published studies: ‘‘World Agriculture,” "Unemployment,’ and the “Colonial Problem"; and she did a great deal of the work of Sir John Hope Simpson’s “Refugee Survey.”[2]The Observer remembered Bryant as:a worker and a fighter, concealing an iron will under a deceptively meek exterior, loving gay company, helping and inspiring all who came into contact with her, never sparing the ‘pygmy body’ which housed a gallant soul.
[3] She concluded:Margaret Bryant worked, for the most part, in anonymity and her name is not included in Chisholm’s acknowledgements in the introduction [to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition].