Catherine Gaskin
Catherine Gaskin Cornberg ( born April 2, 1929 in Dundalk Bay, Ireland; † 6 September 2009 in Sydney, Australia) was an Irish writer. She wrote 21 novels that sold over 40 million copies worldwide.
Life
Catherine Gaskin was born as the youngest of six children of James Gaskin and Mary Harrington. At the age of three months, the family moved to Australia, where Gaskin in Coogee, a suburb of Sydney grew up. She attended Holy Cross School in Woolahra and studied in parallel piano at the Music Conservatory of Sydney. At the age of 14, she began writing her first novel. Every morning at 4 clock she began to write for two hours before they then went to school. The novel was published in 1946 under the title This Other Eden.
After her second novel Dust in Sunlight, she moved to England, where she wrote three bestsellers with All Else Is Folly, All Else Is Folly and Daughter of the House. During this time she took care of her sick sister Moira, with whom she moved to London later. Gaskin took two and a half years researching for her sixth novel, Sara Dane. The story was based on the real life of Mary Reibey, sold worldwide more than 2 million copies and been the basis for the 1982 same twisted Australian television series Sara Dane. Her 1965 published novel The File on Devlin was filmed in 1969 by Australian television.
1955 Gaskin met her 21 years older man Sol Cornberg, a television producer for the Australian television station GTV know. They married in New York City and lived for over ten years in Manhattan. Then they lived for a while in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands before they settled in 1967 in Ballymacahara, near Rathnew in Ireland. Then they lived from 1981 to Isle of Man. With The Charmed Circle published in 1988 her last novel. Since her husband was seriously ill, she gave up the writing and took care of him from now on. When her husband died in 1999, she returned to Australia, where she lived in Mosman. 6 September 2009 Gaskin died at the age of 80 years at the consequences of ovarian cancer. She had no children and left behind two stepsons.