The Upstart

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Corgi, 1997 - Fiction - 476 pages
The son and grandson of cobblers, Samuel Fairbrother owns a series of boot factories. He buys a Newcastle mansion as a means of showing off his wealth and fortune. Totally out of his social depth, he relies on his butler Maitland to tell him how to dress, when to have a party, and whom to invite. Sam is a crude, possessive man who blusters loudly when he does not get his way. He knows he is considered an upstart. When Sam and his wife separate, he insists that his oldest child, Janet, trained as a librarian, stay with him. She and Maitland fall in love, but first one disaster and then another postpone their wedding.

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About the author (1997)

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.

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