[1] 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.

[1] 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.

[1][2] 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).

[6] The Manawatu Times said the first collection was "a gem which should be on the shelves of all collectors of New Zealand books", and warned readers that "the whole edition is likely to be sold out by Christmas".

[3][1] They were described by Joan Stevens as "certainly readable; they follow an easily foreseen pattern, evoke the expected reactions, and provide comedy without ever stretching the faculties too far".

[8] They did, however, have an undercurrent of seriousness, due to Scott's family's experiences in the Great Depression; many of her stories featured themes of debt and poverty, or the failure of being forced to leave the backblocks and return to living in town.

[4] She also published three volumes of plays,[9][10] and in the 1960s collaborated with fellow New Zealand writer Joyce West on five detective novels starring the character Inspector Wright.

[16] An article in The Press in 1957 noted that very few other New Zealand authors had had works translated into foreign languages at that time, save Katherine Mansfield and Ngaio Marsh.