Historical person
Catherine Cookson
Catherine Cookson was an English novelist whose fiction made the industrial and working-class communities of north-east England central to a vast popular readership. Writing from the 1950s until the end of her life, she produced more than a hundred books under her own name and pseudonyms, often focusing on poverty, illegitimacy, class barriers, family conflict and social mobility.
Cookson grew up in severe poverty on Tyneside, believing for much of her childhood that her unmarried mother was her sister. She left school young and worked in domestic and institutional service before marrying Tom Cookson in 1940. Her difficult early life, experiences of class prejudice and family secrecy later supplied much of the emotional and social material that shaped her fiction.
In Catherine Cookson’s Before I Go, written near the end of her life, Before I Go is Catherine Cookson’s final autobiographical account. In Catherine Cookson’s Let Me Make Myself Plain, in Let Me Make Myself Plain, Catherine Cookson may be said to have broken new ground as an author. For broader historical treatment of Catherine Cookson, see Catherine Cookson’s Our Kate and Catherine Cookson’s Plainer Still.
Non Fiction
Non Fiction featuring Catherine Cookson (4 books)
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
