Dame Catherine Ann Cookson (née McMullen; 20 June 1906 – 11 June 1998) was a British writer. She is in the top 20 of the most widely read British novelists,^{[citation needed]} with sales topping 100 million,^{[citation needed]} while she retained a relatively low profile in the world of celebrity writers. Her books were inspired by her deprived youth in South Shields (historically part of County Durham), North East England, the setting for her novels. With 104 titles written in her own name or two other pen names, she is one of the most prolific British novelists.

Cookson, registered as Catherine Ann Davies, was born on 20 June 1906 at 5 Leam Lane in Tyne Dock, South Shields, County Durham, England. She was known as "Katie" as a child. She moved to East Jarrow, which would become the setting for one of her best-known novels, The Fifteen Streets. The illegitimate child of an alcoholic named Kate Fawcett, she grew up thinking her unmarried mother was her sister, as she was brought up by her grandparents, Rose and John McMullen. Biographer Kathleen Jones tracked down her father, whose name was Alexander Davies, a bigamist and gambler from Lanarkshire, Scotland.

She left school at 14 and, after a period of domestic service, took a laundry job at Harton Workhouse in South Shields. In 1929, she moved south to run the laundry at Hastings Workhouse, saving every penny to buy a large Victorian house, and then taking in lodgers to supplement her income.

In June 1940, at the age of 34, she married Tom Cookson, a teacher at Hastings Grammar School. After experiencing four miscarriages late in pregnancy, it was discovered she was suffering from a rare vascular disease, telangiectasia, which caused bleeding from the nose, fingers, and stomach and resulted in anaemia. A mental breakdown followed the miscarriages, from which it took her a decade to recover.

She took up writing as a form of therapy in order to tackle her depression, and she became a founding member of the Hastings Writers' Group. Her first novel, Kate Hannigan, was published in 1950. Though it was labelled a romance novel, she expressed discontent with the stereotype. Her books were, she said, historical novels about people and conditions she knew. Cookson had little connection with the London literary circle.^{[citation needed]}

Cookson wrote almost 100 books, which sold more than 123 million copies, her novels being translated into at least 20 languages. She also wrote books under the pseudonym Catherine Marchant and under her childhood name of Katie McMullen. For seventeen years, until four years after her death, she was the author with the largest number of books borrowed from public libraries in the United Kingdom, losing the top spot to Dame Jacqueline Wilson only in 2002.

Many of Cookson's novels have been adapted for film, radio, and the stage. The first film adaptation of her work was Jacqueline (1956), directed by Roy Ward Baker, based on her book A Grand Man.^{[citation needed]} It was followed by Rooney (1958), directed by George Pollock, based on her book Rooney. Both films starred John Gregson. For commercial reasons, the action of both films was transferred from South Shields to Ireland.

In 1983 Katie Mulholland was adapted into a stage musical by composer Eric Boswell and writer-director Ken Hill. Cookson attended the première.