Catherine Cookson

Dame Catherine Ann Cookson DBE (née McMullen; 20 June 1906 – 11 June 1998) was a British writer. Her works were once the most borrowed from British public libraries and she is in the top 20 of the most widely read British novelists, with sales topping 100 million. Her books were inspired by her deprived youth in South Shields (historically part of County Durham), North East England, the setting for her novels. Her total output was 104 titles published in her own name or under two other pen names.

Interview with Caroline Moorehead (1983)

 * Interview with Caroline Moorehead, quoted in Caroline Moorehead, 'Returning to first principles', The Times (15 August 1983), p. 7


 * I've always been a jabberer. I just talked. I see everything in images. The plot sort of unfolds. Even the dialogue. In the morning, it's all there to put down.


 * You see, until I was 16 my world was a short straight line: Jarrow, East Jarrow, Tyne Dock and East Shield, running along the river. I had everything to catch up. It wasn't until I grew up and read Lord Chesterfield that I began my education. He became my tutor and the public library my university.


 * When Tom's school was evacuated to St Albans during the war we had a little flat opposite the library. I took a book every day: Chaucer, Emerson, John Donne. Good plain writing, no hyperbole. I would have liked to have studied philosophy. Homespun philosophy, that's what you get in my books.

Quotes about Catherine Cookson

 * [T]he trouble with Cookson is that she is not, when all is said and done, a terribly interesting writer. Her popularity is a notable phenomenon, true, but she does not have the kind of outsize literary talent that could do justice to her outsize themes.
 * Hugh Barnes, 'Lots of pulp, but no pith', The Times (28 March 1992), p. 93
 * A review of The House of Women


 * Mrs Cookson certainly has a remarkable gift for bringing a tear to the eye.
 * Jeremy Kingston, 'Tears in the eye', The Times (25 May 1988), p. 14
 * A review of The Fifteen Streets


 * Catherine Cookson in The Black Velvet Gown...has a story telling gift that would stop a runaway train.
 * Philippa Toomey, 'Strange eventful assorted history', The Times (3 May 1984), p. 11


 * Catherine Cookson is at her most convincing when describing hardship and misery – her characters less powerful when happy and contented.
 * Philippa Toomey, 'Death and danger on the high seas', The Times (21 April 1990), p. 37
 * A review of The Wingless Bird