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. Smith began writing books in the 1820s: a two-volume novel in 1824 called A Winter in Washington, or Memoirs of the Seymour Family, and What is Gentility? (1825). She also wrote several biographical profiles, including one of her close friend Dolley Madison for the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, published in 1836. Source: Wikipedia (en)