Margaret Armstrong

Margaret Armstrong (1867-1944) was a 19th and early 20th-century American book cover designer, illustrator and author. She is best known for her book covers influenced by Art Nouveau. She also wrote and illustrated the first comprehensive guide to wildflowers of the American West, 'Field Book of Western Wild Flowers' (1915).

Margaret Neilson Armstrong was born in 1867 in New York City, the daughter of American diplomat and stained glass artist Maitland Armstrong and his wife Helen, who was a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant.

She began her career as a book cover designer in the late 1880s, initially doing commissions for Charles Scribner's and A.C. McClurg and later, other publishers. She designed more than 314 book covers and book bindings, about half of which were for Scribner's.

Armstrong's passion for natural forms reflected her interest in botany and in particular, wild flowers. During the summers of the 1909-1914 period, she travelled and camped throughout the Western United States and Canada, becoming one of the first women to descend into the Grand Canyon. She discovered there several species of flowers that had not yet been identified by botanists. She describes those and many other species in her 'Field Book of Western Wild Flowers' (1915). With its 550 illustrations (48 in colour), her Field Book is considered the first comprehensive guide on the subject.

In her sixties and seventies, she wrote three critically praised mystery novels and two biographies.

She died in New York City in 1944.