Margaret May Dashiell (January 7, 1867 – February 11, 1958)[1] was an American artist and writer whose works depicted contemporary life in Richmond, Virginia, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Charleston, South Carolina.

Margaret May Dashiell was born to Thomas P. May and Mary Taylor May in Louisiana on January 7, 1867, where her family owned a plantation in Saint John the Baptist Parish.

She grew up in New Orleans and was educated at St. Simeon's Select School for Girls and Young Ladies, run by the Catholic Daughters of Charity.

Her preferred mediums were in watercolor, wash, and pen and ink, and she depicted genre scenes of both white and black people and local landmarks.

Dashiell also illustrated a number of works by others: Uncle Jerry's Platform and Other Christmas Stories (1897) by Gillie Cary, Irwin Russell's 1878 poem Christmas-Night in the Quarters (1948), the cookbook Famous Recipes from Old Virginia (1935), and Haworth Idyll: A Fantasy (1946) by Roberta Trigg, a novel about the Brontë sisters..[1][2] From 1915 to 1930, Dashiell operated the Serendipity Shop at 177 North Adams Street in Richmond, where she sold antiques, books, prints, and drawings.