Margaret Bayard Smith (20 February 1778 – 7 June 1844) was an American author and political commentator in the early Republic of the United States, a time when women generally lived within strict gender roles. Her writings and relationships shaped both politics and society in the capital of early Washington, DC. Her literary reputation is based primarily on a collection of her letters and notebooks written from 1800 to 1841, and published posthumously in 1906 as The First Forty Years of Washington Society, edited by Gaillard Hunt.