Cookson, Catherine (1906-1998), an English novelist, was one of the most prolific and best-selling authors of the 1900’s. She wrote about 80 novels, which sold a total of about 100 million copies and were translated into many languages. Most of her books centered upon people ground down by hard work and poor living conditions, reflecting her own poverty-stricken upbringing in the Tyneside area of northeastern England. She wrote some of her novels under the name Catherine Marchant.
Cookson did not complete her first book until she was 44. From then on, she kept up a steady stream of books written with great narrative skill and pace. They were mostly popular romances featuring working-class lives and love affairs set against a tough background, either in the docks area of Tyneside or in rural Northumberland.
Catherine Ann McMullen was born on June 20, 1906, in the Tyne Dock area of South Shields, County Durham. The family later moved to Jarrow, and at the age of 13 Catherine left school and became a domestic servant. In 1929, she moved to Hastings in southern England, where she met and married a schoolteacher named Tom Cookson in 1940. In 1945, she suffered a mental breakdown after three miscarriages and giving birth to a stillborn baby. Cookson took 10 years to recover. Her husband encouraged her to write as a form of therapy.
Cookson at first wrote plays, then in 1950, she finished her first novel, Kate Hannigan. This began a literary outpouring that continued for more than 40 years. During that time, Cookson averaged about two books a year. Among the best known of her later novels were Katie Mulholland (1967), the first of her works to be published in the United States, and The Round Tower (1968), winner of the Winifred Holtby Prize presented by the Royal Society of Literature to the best regional novel of the year. Cookson also wrote several series, including the “Mallen” trilogy and the cycles of novels chronicling the lives of her characters Mary Ann Shaughnessy and Tilly Trotter. A number of her novels became successful television series. She also wrote children’s books and books of memoirs, including Our Kate: An Autobiography (1968), Catherine Cookson Country (1985), and Let Me Make Myself Plain (1986).
In 1976, Cookson moved back to Northumberland. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1985 and became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1993. She died on June 11, 1998.
