Donald Maxwell (born in Clapham, Surrey, now part of London, in 1877, died in 1936) was a British writer and illustrator.

Donald Maxwell was the son of Dr Frederick Charles Maxwell, a Methodist clergyman and schoolmaster, and his wife Lucilla, also an illustrator. His father had founded the Manor House School in Cambridge in 1876, where Donald's childhood was probably spent. He had at least four siblings: Stanley, Colin, and Gordon (1883–1942), who also became an author and illustrator, and a sister Maud. Both Donald and Gordon became keen yachtsmen and served as official Admiralty artists in World War I.

Maxwell trained in London at the Clapham School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art, and the Royal College of Art. He was soon writing and illustrating extensively for The Yachting Monthly and other magazines. In about 1909, he became a regular correspondent for the Daily Graphic and the weekly illustrated paper The Graphic and continued to do so until it closed in 1932. In later life he wrote weekly illustrated articles for the Church Times.

Most of Maxwell's thirty or more self-illustrated books were about voyages in foreign parts (Europe, Mesopotamia, Palestine, India) and later about the sights of Southern England. He also illustrated books by many other authors, including Rudyard Kipling, to whom his mother was related.