Margaret Stokes

Margaret McNair Stokes (March 1832 – 20 September 1900) was an Irish Illustrator, antiquarian and writer.

Born in Dublin, she was the daughter of Dr William Stokes and his wife Mary (née Black).

Important figures in the field of antiquities such as artist Sir George Petrie, lawyer and poet Sir Samuel Ferguson, Edwin Wyndham-Quin, 3rd Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl, and historians James Henthorn Todd and William Reeves were frequent visitors to the Stokes family home, and this is said to have begun Margaret's interest in Irish antiquities.

Her Early Christian Art In Ireland (1887, 2nd edition 1911) was well regarded, and if reviewer Oscar Wilde was unmoved by Stokes' prose, he praised her illustrations.

[5] Her papers are possessed by Trinity College Dublin and the National Gallery of Ireland holds a chalk portrait by Walter Osborne.