Maria E. Ward, known by her nickname Violet, was an avid bicyclist, the cofounder of the Staten Island Bicycling Club, and the author of Bicycling for Ladies. Ward was born in Manhattan, New York, the daughter of General William Greene Ward and Emily Graham Ward, and later lived in Staten Island with her parents and sister. She cofounded the Staten Island Bicycle Club with her friend, the acclaimed photographer Alice Austen, in 1895, and Austen's photographs were used as references for the illustrations in Bicycling for Ladies, originally published by Brentano's in 1896.

Ward has been widely celebrated for her contribution to the bicycling world in a wealth of media, including the New York Times article "Bicycle Diaries: Two Centuries of New York City" the Bust magazine article "First The Bicycle, Next The Vote: The Story Of Bicycles," the book Mothers and Daughters of Invention, and Momentum Mag, which called her one of the three women "who changed the course of history on bicycles." Ward lived in New York, and died in 1941 at the age of seventy-eight.