Katie's Daughter: The Real Catherine Cookson

by Piers Dudgeon

Kate's Daughter gets to the heart of the Catherine Cookson story. With the help of material made available only since Catherine's death - interviews with family and friends and Catherine's written records, letters, and diaries - Piers Dudgeon lifts the veil on the myth and lays bare the true nature of this complex and fascinating woman.

Genres: Biography

Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Piers Dudgeon is a British author of more than thirty works of nonfiction. After a decade as a London editor, he founded a publishing company working with writers including John Fowles, Catherine Cookson, Peter Ackroyd, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Conran and Ted Hughes, later writing acclaimed literary biographies and cultural histories set in Yorkshire.

Reviews

[Tamhack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Catherine Cookson was a twentieth century popular fiction writer who became Britain’s widely read novelist, selling over hundred million copies of her novels. Moreover, she is credited for writing the story for the highly acclaimed film, Colour Blind.

She talks of her "blood trouble" and all the difficulties it caused her. (Cookson had a rare hereditary blood disorder called telangiectasia which caused bleeding; bloody noses and bleeding fingers, she had several stomach operations to stop bleeding, anemia, 4 miscarriages and was not able to have children.) She also had other health issues: a nervous breakdown lead to being suicidal and a decade to recover. She had a very trying childhood and mother.
But despite all of the above, she was the top 20 most widely read Bristish author. She wrote 103 books under her own name and 2 under a pen name.

In 1985 she received the OE from the Queen. There followed her eightieth birthday, from which she seemed to gain a certain immortality, the press beginning to refer to her as an icon of the North. In the same year there was a second move of publisher to the even more high profile Bantam Press, the parent company of the imprint Corgi Books, which had published her in paperback for nearly thirty years. Seven years later she was mad a Dame of the British Empire. Five years after that , in june 1998, she died.

Cookson was born as Catherine Ann McMullen in June 27, 1906 in Tyneside, England. She was raised by her grandparents as she was an illegitimate child of an alcoholic mother, whom she first assumed to be her sister. She moved to East Jarrow, County Durham with her grandparents and the location served as the setting for her novels. At the age of 13 she left the school without completing her studies. Henceforth, she took up a number of odd jobs to support herself and saved every single penny so she could buy a house. After years of hardships, she eventually settled down, marrying a high school teacher, Tom Cookson. She suffered from rare vascular disease that resulted in her four consecutive miscarriages. The tragic series of events led to her mental breakdown and she convalesced for a decade.

So as toward off the perpetually settled depression, Cookson found console in writing. She joined Hastings Writers’ Group that helped her hone her writing skills and artistic sense. In 1950, she made her writing debut with Kate Hannigan. Although the novel was categorized as romance, Cookson shared her discontent regarding its stereotypical classification. She claimed her novels to be of historical nature primarily. Half a century later sequel to her first novel, Kate Hannigan’s Girl (2001), appeared posthumously. Subsequently, she wrote numerous novel, short stories and autobiographies in series format. Some of her well known works include The Mary Ann stories, The Mallen trilogy, The Hamilton trilogy, Plainer Still and Our Kate.

Cookson’s books were well researched and often caused her huge inconvenience. For instance, she once visited a mine as the female protagonist she created is shown to be located in a mining area. Leading an ordinary life in her youth, she longed to write about the privileged class. However, she grew up to realize that the extraordinary stories lies with the ordinary people, hence she pursued their stories in her writing. Furthermore, her literary works have been translated into twenty different languages. She wrote under two pen names; Catherine Marchant and Katie McMullen. She authored almost hundred books and over 123 million copies of her works have been sold worldwide. The popularity of her literary work is evident by the fact that she enjoyed the title of the most borrowed author from public libraries in the UK. She continued to hold the title for seventeen years until after her demise.

Additionally, she profusely contributed to other forms of arts and entertainment. Most of her works were adapted for big and small screen, radio and theater. Her novel, titled A Grand Man, was taken up for film adaptation, released in 1956 as Jacqueline. In 1958, George Pollock directed a film based on Cookson’s Rooney. A stage musical premiered in 1983 was inspired by the author’s Katie Mulholland. In fact, she gained the utmost popularity through television. ITV adapted her eighteen books in a drama series which received highest ratings over the decade.

The success of her works brought her great wealth but she remained frugal. She began philanthropic work discreetly and made huge difference in the lives of impoverished suffering patients and struggling writers. In 1993 she became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Catherine Cookson continued to write till her final years and passed away at the age of 91.

Religion represented a cultural and social division to Catherine.
Catherine was illegitmit which cause many issues.
"In a story which has so much to do with identity, it is ironic that names are so often confusingly similar. Catherine Cookson (nee McMullen) was known as Katie as a child and Kitty as an adult. Her mother , Catherine Fawcett, was known as Kate.. Catherine said she left the north (her home town) because of "rejection".
Catherine did not bond with her mother Kate. So she went to live with her grandmother, Rose. Rose was described: " everything a mother could be, her ample bosom became the child's comforter and the soft, experienced voice of this mature survivor, born before the modern industrial world had not going, was probably Catherine's saving grace."
Rose's gave Catherine all her attention because she was the only child.

"She will have felt ashamed, because illegitimacy was a big black mark in the respectability game culture, as John Atkinson said. but what really shook the little girl was the information that Rose and John were not her parents. The web of security that Rose had spun was shown to be a web of lies. Catherine had lost her real mother at birth, and she would not be restored to her until the last few years of Kate's life, but now it had been shown that Rose was not her mother either. Love had disposed of her. This was real trauma."

"Catherine never loved her mother and form this moment on, she found difficulty in forming affective attachments to anyone."

"For the fact was that Catherine could not love her mother, she felt only antagonism and hate, which she now brought to grounds ing Kate's dependence on alcohol, a dependence which may well have been precipitated by her daughter's antagonism."

"What she sensed in religion was the power to unify her fractured psyche, and in a vision she would receive her first real feeling of the pure, selfless love, for this she so yearned."

"Catherine believed in God wholeheartedly both as a Child and a young woman, but Christianity would be revealed as a deceit second only to that of the dissemblance of here birth when she discovered that the stories were not true."

Annie Smyth became a companionship to Catherine.

Through marriage to Tom, Catherine gained a new kind of respect...

"...had Kate not come down to live in Hastings in 1932, had she and Tom been blessed with a family of their own, then the prognosis might have been different, and she may never have written novels."

"The five heart attacks in 1977/8 were followed by two in 1990, and, in between, there were 30-mile, emergency flights from bristol Lodge to hospital in Newcastle due to the telangiectasia bleeding, if a wound could not be plugged or cauterized at home. In the end, this led to her Consultant, Hugo Marshall, insisting that she move closer to the city. ... Catherine and Tom moved there in 1991."

"Though the final years, Tom never faltered. The last time I visited the house he was beside the bed holding her hand through the hour I stayed."

[Lynn Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good insight into the life of Catherine Cookson. It explains why some of her books contain a lot of pain and suffering. The author obviously got to know Catherine well and did extensive research.

[Adrian Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good. Enhanced by the photos.
One star taken off due to the frequent employment of cod psychology, and the many attempts at throwing light onto Catherine's psychology via explication of various plots in her books. I ended up skipping these. Spoilers, Piers!!

[Patricia Fawcett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout her long and prolific writing life, Catherine Cookson made much of her strict upbringing. Brought up believing that the eponymous Katie was her sister, before learning that she was, in fact, her mother, Catherine based much of her writing on personal experience. We were led to believe that Katie was a hard-drinking, caustic woman, yet Piers Dudgeon sensitively peels away the layers of family folklore to reveal that, in many ways, Katie inspired her daughter and made a positive contribution to her work. It may be that Catherine's inspiration was driven by what she perceived to be her mother's faults; she seemed all too ready to apportion blame. Whilst this was an interesting, revealing account of a great writer, one whom I have greatly admired, I finished the book unsure as to whether I could fully relate to her; indeed, or even to like her very much.

[Lorna Tulloch]

Loved this book. Good easy reading.