The Cultured Handmaiden - Hardcover

Cookson, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 043414276X ISBN 13: 9780434142767

Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

Yes, that's a good description of you, a cultured handmaiden. So agreeable, so polite, so damned eager to please, you let people wipe their boots on you'. Such was the devastating parting remark of the man Jinny Brownlow had thought for her. At twenty-one, Jinny is basically alone in the world working with a marked lack of job satisfaction in the typing pool of big engineering firm in Tyneside. She tries to find an outlet in the local amateur theatre group but again the only part she ever seems to play is that of a general dogsbody. However things are about to change. Two older men come into her life, both with demands to make of her, and who will each, in his very different way, prove a essential catalyst in the reshaping of her life.

About this title

Review

"Catherine Cookson's novels are about hardship, the intractability of life and of individuals, the struggle first to survive and next to make sense of one's survival. Humour, toughness, resolution, and generosity are Cookson virtues, in a world which she often depicts as cold and violent. Her novels are weighted and driven by her own early experiences of illegitimacy and poverty. This is what gives them power. In the specialised world of women's popular fiction, Cookson has created her own territory."

-- Helen Dunmore, "The Times" (London)

"Whenever the desire for entertaining fiction must be quenched, a Catherine Cookson novel...should prove an excellent resource."

-- "The Philadelphia Inquirer"

About the Author

Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 043414276X
• ISBN 13: 9780434142767
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256