Margaret Culkin Banning

Margaret Frances Culkin Banning (March 18, 1891 – January 4, 1982) was a best-selling American author of thirty-six novels and an early advocate of women's rights. Banning was born in Buffalo, Minnesota, the daughter of William E. Culkin, who served in the Minnesota state senate from 1895 to 1899. She graduated from Vassar College in 1912. She was also the first woman admitted to the Duluth Hall of Fame. She died in 1982, at age 90, in Tryon, North Carolina.

She purchased the Friendly Hills estate near Tryon, North Carolina in 1936, and enjoyed the property seasonally for the remainder of her life. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

Selected works

• Country Club People
• The First Woman
• Half Loaves
• A Handmaid of the Lord
• Letters from England, Summer 1942
• Lifeboat Number Two
• Mesabi
• Salud!: A South American Journal
• Spellbinders
• Women for Defense
• The Women of the Family