Catherine Gaskin
The Early years
Catherine Gaskin was born in Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland on April 2nd 1929. The youngest of six children, she moved with her family to Australia when she was 3 months old.
Growing up in Sydney, Catherine’s ambition was to be a pianist, and she studied at the city’s Conservatorium of Music. But at aged 15 she made a decision that was to set the course for her life – to write a novel. To fit around her studies, Catherine got up at 4am each morning to write, completing the book in the Christmas holidays when she was 16. She sent the manuscript to four publishers, without mentioning her age; three rejected it and one invited her in to the office.
The schoolgirl bestseller
Esme Scott wrote in the Daily Mirror (August 18th 1947) that the publisher was surprised to come face to face with a schoolgirl: “I expected a girl of twenty-seven or so,” he said, “not this mite.” Catherine left school to revise the manuscript, and when This Other Eden was published it sold 50,000 copies in its first two months, making her a bestselling author at the age of just 17.
Moving to London
The following year, Catherine moved to London with her mother and sister Moira (known as Pip), where she lived for seven years. Catherine worked in the library at Harrods for six weeks, and wrote more novels. It was during this time that she wrote Sara Dane, the rags to riches saga of an English convict in Australia, which sold more than two million copies, and was turned into a TV mini-series.
It was also while in London that she met her future husband, Sol Cornberg, on a blind date. He had asked a friend of his if she knew anyone who would like to go and see the film Moby Dick with him. Catherine was the one person the friend knew who did. “And,” said the Daily Express (November 5th 1956), “so they were married.”
Living around the world
Sol Cornberg was an American, over from NBC in the US to design television studios in England. The couple lived for ten years in Manhattan, on Central Park South and Broadway. They spent summers in Duchess County, NY.
After a shorter stay in the Virgin Islands (1965-67), and a brief return to the US, Catherine and Sol moved to Ireland. Catherine told Roy Plomley during her Desert Island Discs interview (1980), that she had held an ambition to go back to live in Ireland. At the time she returned, the Irish government was keen to encourage writers, artists and composers to live in the country; fellow writers who settled there during that period included Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth and Susan Howatch.
In 1981, Catherine and Sol made their home on the Isle of Man. Sol Cornberg died there in 1999, and the following year, Catherine returned to live in Sydney. She remained there until September 6th 2009 when, at the age of 80, she died of ovarian cancer.
The legacy of Catherine Gaskin
Catherine Gaskin retired from writing twenty years before her death, writing her last novel, The Charmed Circle, in 1988. She was quoted as saying that she was resigned to becoming obsolete in her own lifetime. On the contrary, her stories and characters are well remembered and loved by readers around the world today, and the announcement of new ebook editions of her titles has been greeted with interest and excitement. These new reissues have been licensed by The Society of Authors, to whom Catherine left her literary estate.
Good storytelling never goes out of fashion, and now a new generation of readers have the opportunity to discover the writing of Catherine Gaskin.
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Read Catherine Gaskin’s novels in exclusive ebook editions from Wyndham Books. Available now from Amazon.
The Property of a Gentleman by Catherine Gaskin
Sara Dane by Catherine Gaskin
The Lynmara Legacy by Catherine Gaskin
The Summer of the Spanish Woman by Catherine Gaskin
A Falcon for a Queen by Catherine Gaskin
Promises by Catherine Gaskin
Edge of Glass by Catherine Gaskin
Blake’s Reach by Catherine Gaskin
Fiona by Catherine Gaskin
Corporation Wife by Catherine Gaskin
Family Affairs by Catherine Gaskin
I Know My Love by Catherine Gaskin
The Ambassador’s Women by Catherine Gaskin
The Tilsit Inheritance by Catherine Gaskin
All Else is Folly by Catherine Gaskin
The Charmed Circle by Catherine Gaskin
Daughter of the House by Catherine Gaskin
The File on Devlin by Catherine Gaskin