Mary Ann Omnibus (1)

Description

Volume OneA Grand ManThe Lord and Mary AnnThe Devil and Mary AnnLove and Mary Ann Volume 1 follows Mary Ann, a young girl living in poverty in a dockland tenement on Tyneside, from the ages of eight to thirteen. She is determined to bring about a better way of life for her family and, to the amazement of the gentle parish priest, Father Owen, and the rage and consternation of her arch-enemy, Sarah Flanagan, Mary Ann's tenacity eventually pays off.

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.