Mary Edith Clarke was born at Waimate North on 23 September 1888.
She grew up shaped by her family's deep connection to the north, and she went on to become one of New Zealand's most beloved and prolific writers — known to her readers as Mary Scott.
Her education was hard-won. She attended Napier Girls' High School and then Auckland University, graduating with first-class Honours in English and French.
She taught at Gisborne and Christchurch, and in 1913 her sister Frances married David Scott, a King Country farmer.
Mary met David's brother Walter, and married him at Te Karaka on 12 October 1914.
The life that followed was one of extraordinary hardship and equally extraordinary richness. The Scotts moved to a remote back-blocks sheep farm on the slopes of Mount Pirongia, where they struggled with bush sickness (a mineral deficiency affecting livestock), two devastating fires (the first in 1917 destroyed the house and all their possessions; the second in 1918 burnt the fences and pastures and killed most of the stock), and years of isolation. Mary took a job as librarian in Te Awamutu when money ran out; she raised four children largely alone during the days; she wrote at night.
In late 1920 she began sending articles and stories to magazines and newspapers. By 1930 she was the 'Annual Discovery' of the New Zealand Artists' Annual. She contributed a weekly item to the Dunedin Evening Star for almost fifty years. Her first novel, under the pseudonym Marten Stuart, was published in 1934; her later novels, written under her own married name, were set in the King Country and were praised for their honest, warm, and sometimes comic portrayal of New Zealand rural life. She wrote more than thirty books in all.
Her autobiography, Days That Have Been, was published by Blackwood and Janet Paul in 1966.
Walter died at Arapuni in March 1960. Mary moved to Howick and then lived with one of her daughters at Tirau. She died at Tokoroa on 16 July 1979.
Her obituary in the New Zealand Herald noted that she was the granddaughter of George Clarke, the pioneer missionary — a thread she wore lightly, but that ran through everything she wrote about this country and its people.
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