Mary Scott

Mary Edith Scott (; 23 September 1888 – 16 July 1979) was a New Zealand novelist, teacher and librarian. She was a prolific writer who specialised in romantic comedies set in rural New Zealand, and her books were widely read both in New Zealand and overseas. From 1953 to 1978 she wrote at a rate of at least one book per year. She published over thirty novels, five detective novels written jointly with Joyce West, an autobiography, and three collections of plays. Early life and education Scott was born in Waimate North, Northland, New Zealand in 1888. She was the daughter of Marsden Clarke, a grazier, and his wife Frances Emily Stuart. She was a great-granddaughter of George Clarke, an early New Zealand missionary. After Scott's father died in 1889, her mother took her and her older siblings to Napier, New Zealand to live with their maternal grandfather, Edward Stuart, the second Bishop of Waiapu. She attended Napier Girls' High School for two years, after which the family moved to Auckland and she attended Auckland Girls' Grammar School. In 1905 she went to Auckland University College to study English, French and history. After a period of teaching at Gisborne High School, she completed a Masters of Arts with first-class honours, graduating in 1910. After graduating she continued her teaching career. In around 1912 she climbed the mountain range of The Remarkables with her brother and was possibly the first woman to do so. Marriage and farm In October 1914 she married Walter Scott, her sister's husband's brother, and they moved to a sheep farm on the slopes of Mount Pirongia in the King Country. They had four children together. The farming life was a difficult one and the family struggled with most of their cattle dying of bush sickness, and much of their property being destroyed by two fires in 1917 and 1918. Years later she was to tell the story of their struggle to develop the property and raise a family in her autobiography, Days That Have Been (1966), and would also use these experiences as the basis for her novel The Unwritten Book (1957). In 1927 the family moved to a new farm at Ngutunui, near Te Awamutu, and Scott took a job as a librarian in town.