Evelyn May Clowes, known by the pseudonym Elinor Mordaunt (7 May 1872 – 25 June 1942), was an English author, writer and traveller born in Nottinghamshire, England. Her travels included Mauritius and Australia; she undertook a wide variety of employment. Early life Mordaunt was the fifth child of St. John Legh Clowes, a South African writer, and the Honourable Elizabeth Caroline Bingham. She was born in the village of Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire, and christened as Evelyn May Clowes. Her maternal grandfather was the Irish nobleman Denis Arthur Bingham, 3rd Baron Clanmorris. Growing up in genteel circumstances, her early childhood was spent at Charlton Down House near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and her teenage years near Heythrop in the Cotswolds. She was educated at home by governesses, excelling at German, Latin, Greek, shorthand writing, landscape painting, and fabric and wallpaper design. Australia In 1897 she went to Mauritius as companion to her cousin Caroline (wife of Sir George Le Hunte) and in 1898 married Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe, who owned a sugar plantation. She gave birth to two stillborn children. After a few years of marriage, she found it impossible to live with her husband and returned to England. Shortly afterwards she went to Australia, arriving 10 June 1902 and lived at Melbourne for about eight years. Her son, Godfrey Weston Wiehe, was born 9 March 1903. It was necessary for Mordaunt to earn a living and while in Melbourne she edited a woman's fashion paper, wrote short stories and articles, made blouses, designed embroideries, tilled gardens, acted as a housekeeper, and did artistic work. Her health was not strong, but she undertook any kind of work which would provide a living for herself and her infant son. This gained her an experience of life which was of the greatest use to her as an author. Writings Mordaunt's first book, the Garden of Contentment, was published in England in 1902 under her pen-name Elinor Mordaunt. At Melbourne she published a volume of sketches, Rosemary, That's for Remembrance (1909), and in 1911 appeared On the Wallaby through Victoria, by E. M. Clowes, an interesting account of conditions in that state at that period. Returning to England on 14 July 1909 she soon began a long series of volumes of fiction. She changed her name by deed poll to Evelyn May Mordaunt on 1 July 1915 and gained a reputation as a writer of short stories for