Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Amity Public Library | FIC COOKSON | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC COOKSON | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Bridget Dean Mordaunt was a woman of consequence in her own part of the world. Inheriting her father's businesses at the age of nineteen, by the time she was twenty-three in 1880, she was running them as confidently as any man. Yet the path destiny required her to follow was not an easy one. Her feckless cousin Victoria became infatuated with Lionel Filmore, the fortune-hunting elder son of an old but impoverished family living in the decayed grandeur of Grove House. Bridget had no illusions about Lionel, but Victoria's happiness was paramount to her. So a pattern began to form that would shape the lives of generations to come, a pattern of some good and some great evil, but all of it inexorably linking Bridget ever more closely with the Filmores and their house. THE BLACK CANDLE displays all of Catherine Cookson's narrative skills and shrewd perception of human strengths and frailties which have established her as our most widely-read and best-loved novelist. And in Bridget Mordaunt she has achieved a notable and highly distinctive addition to her gallery of remarkable women. From the Paperback edition.
Author Notes
Catherine Cookson, 1906 - 1998 British writer Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, Co. Durham. She was born illegitimate and into poverty with a mother who was, at times, an alcoholic and violent. From the age of thirteen, Catherine suffered from hereditary hemorrhage telangiectasia. She also believed, for many years, that she was abandoned as a baby and that her mother was actually her older sister.
Catherine wrote her first short story, "The Wild Irish Girl," at the age of eleven and sent it to the South Shields Gazette, which sent it back in three days. She left school at the age of thirteen to work as a maid for the rich and powerful. It was then that she saw the great class barrier inside their society. From working in a laundry, she saved enough money to open an apartment hotel in Hastings. Schoolmaster, Tom Cookson, was one of her tenants and became her husband in 1940. She suffered several miscarriages and became depressed so she began writing to help her recovery.
Catherine has written over ninety novels and, under the pseudonym of Catherine Marchant, she wrote three different series of books, which included the Bill Bailey, the Mary Ann, and the Mallen series. Her first book, "Kate Hannigan" (1950), tells the partly autobiographical story of a working-class girl becoming pregnant by an upper-middle class man. The baby is raised by Kate's parents and the child believes them to be her real parents and that Kate is her sister. Many of her novels are set in 19th century England and tell of poverty in such settings as mines, shipyards and farms. Her characters usually cross the class barrier by means of education.
Catherine received the Freedom of the Borough of South Shields and the Royal Society of Literature's award for the Best Regional Novel of the year. The Variety Club of Great Britain named her Writer of the Year and she was voted Personality of the North-East. She received an honorary degree from the University of Newcastle and was made Dame in 1933.
Just shortly before her ninety-second birthday, on June 11, 1998, Catherine died in her home near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. "Kate Hannigan's Girl" (1999), was published posthumously and continues the story of her first novel.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Cookson spins a story of the intermingling of very diverse families in a small English village at the turn of the century. A young heiress becomes entangled with two brothers from an aristocratic family whose fortune has been squandered away. In addition, she is enamored with a young employee from her candle-blacking factory. The dynamics of the relationships of these families result in events that have impact on their lives for three generations. Young adult readers will relate to the heroine's desire to help those less fortunate than herself, and will enjoy the interplay of familiar forces over which there is no control. --Donna R. Deibel, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Veteran romancer Cookson ( The Bailey Chronicles ) provides another satisfying drama featuring class tensions and an indomitable woman in 19th- century England. Heiress Bridget Mourdant, manager of her family's factory, squelches her attraction to working man Joe Skinner but oversees his education and promotion within the ranks. When Joe suddenly marries, Bridget is mystified, but the reader already knows that Joe's wife, a factory girl, carries the child of Lionel Filmore, scapegrace scion of the local gentry, who must wed wealthily to support his profligate ways. When the Skinners and Filmores inevitably clash, the innocent Joe is blamed for a resulting death. Though this intriguing saga is rich in colorful characters, Bridget stands firmly at its center, doing her best to shape the destinies of all around her over three generations. Bringing the period vividly to life, Cookson is in top form here. Doubleday Book Club alternate. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The scrappy, loudmouthed lasses and lads--with a diction like dueling Brillo pads--of Cookson's early Tyneside scullery romances have wilted here into a boring middle-class lot. In this long. winded tale of family messes set in a late-19th-century English village, there are a by-blow, a concealed crime, violent deaths, marital miseries, etc.--and characters who don't whomp up much sympathy for their plights. Bridget Mourdant--who is running her deceased pa's boot-polish factory with ease--is attracted to worker Joe Skinner; but Joe has already married pregnant Lily to save her from disgrace. Poor Lily had been cast off by her seducer, wealthy and horrid Lionel Filmore--and, later in the story, Joe's brother Fred will find out, blackmail Lionel, and be murdered. And guess who'll be hanged for the crime? Next, move on to 1896 and a new generation--with Joseph, son of Lily and Lionel, who knows not his origins. He'll marry Amy, daughter of Bridget and Douglas, the nice but small brother of Lionel, the bad and big. So then on to the matter of Joseph's family research; two illicit affairs; and deaths all around, plus an attack by Henrietta, a huge deaf mute. Clanking with dialogue like ""You are my son but you are rotten to the core,"" it is all, on the whole, rather a chore. Cookson's early potboilers--with their flavor of authenticity deep in life-among-the-lowly by the Tyne--were great fun. But this is merely tiresome. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.