Catherine Cookson

Dame Catherine Cookson (1906-1998) was an English novelist whose stories of hardship and family life in the industrial North East sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.

She was born Catherine Ann McMullen on 20 June 1906 at Tyne Dock, South Shields, the illegitimate daughter of an unmarried mother, and was brought up largely by her grandparents. She worked in laundries before marrying the schoolmaster Tom Cookson in 1940. Her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published by Macdonald in London in 1950, when she was in her forties. The Fifteen Streets followed in 1952. Later successes included the Mallen trilogy, published by Heinemann (The Mallen Streak, 1973; The Mallen Girl and The Mallen Litter, both 1974), and the Tilly Trotter novels. She also wrote as Catherine Marchant.

Estimates of her sales run from over 100 million to more than 123 million copies. She was the most borrowed author in UK public libraries for seventeen years, until Jacqueline Wilson overtook her in 2002. Eighteen of her novels were adapted for television between 1989 and 2001, among them The Fifteen Streets (1989), and The Black Velvet Gown won an International Emmy. She was appointed OBE in 1985 and DBE in 1993, gave large sums to Newcastle University, and died in Newcastle upon Tyne on 11 June 1998.

For collectors. The key book is Kate Hannigan, first published by Macdonald in London in 1950; it did not appear in a US hardback until Simon & Schuster issued it in 2004. Kirkus notes that a scene in the 1950 edition was then thought scandalously graphic, and that the novel is set in the Tyneside slums of the early 1900s. Later key titles were first issued by Heinemann in London, including the Mallen trilogy (1973 to 1974) and Tilly Trotter and its sequels Tilly Trotter Wed (1981) and Tilly Widowed (1982). Television tie-in reissues are common and should not be confused with the originals.