Maria Elvins Clarke née Pountney (1869 – 20 June 1958) was a British journalist based in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

from the early 1900s until 1937 who wrote under the name Moma Clarke. She was the Paris fashion correspondent for the British newspaper ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' from the early 1910s until 1937,The Times Archive also writing articles about topics including the theatre, the arts, and Parisian life. She was born Maria Elvins Pountney in

Great Barr Great Barr is now a large and loosely defined area to the north-west of Birmingham, England. The area was historically in Staffordshire, and the parts now in Birmingham were once known as Perry Barr, which is still the name of an adjacent Bir ...

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

, England, 1869. Her parents were Benjamin Pountney and Ellen (born Spencer). She had an older brother, Frederick Spencer Pountney, who was also a journalist. After the death of their parents, the siblings travelled in Europe and visited Paris. On 19 August 1903, Maria married Herbert Edward Clarke, an English publisher living and working in Paris, owner of the Imprimerie Vendôme at 338 Rue St-Honoré. Herbert died in 1931, and Moma Clarke lived in Paris until 1937, when she returned to Britain. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Clarke resided at Turleigh Cottage, in the village of

Turleigh Turleigh is a hamlet in west Wiltshire, England. It lies immediately south of the village of Winsley, overlooking the Avon valley, about west of Bradford on Avon. The Kennet and Avon Canal and Avoncliff railway station are below the hamlet i ...

near

Bradford on Avon Bradford-on-Avon (sometimes Bradford on Avon or Bradford upon Avon) is a town and civil parish in west Wiltshire, England, near the border with Somerset, which had a population of 9,402 at the 2011 census. The town's canal, historic buildings, s ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, moving to Rivers St in Bath in 1952. She died in

Worthing Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Ho ...

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

on 20 June 1958. She published several books, including ''Paris Waits, 1914'' (1915); ''Cameos of French Life'' (1925); ''Paris'' (1929); ''Versailles'' (1930); ''Light and Shade in France'' (1939); and ''A Stranger Within the Gates'' (1942).

References

1869 births 1958 deaths English columnists English women journalists British women columnists 20th-century British women writers 20th-century British non-fiction writers English fashion journalists People from Great Barr English expatriates in France The Times journalists 20th-century English women 20th-century English people 20th-century pseudonymous writers Pseudonymous women writers {{UK-journalist-stub