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Child of the North: Memories of a Northern Childhood
 
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Child of the North: Memories of a Northern Childhood (Paperback)

by Josephine Cox (Foreword, Collaborator), Piers Dudgeon (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £6.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Child of the North: Memories of a Northern Childhood + Girl on the Platform (Quick Reads) + Born Bad
Price For All Three: £11.30

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  • This item: Child of the North: Memories of a Northern Childhood by Josephine Cox

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  • Girl on the Platform (Quick Reads) by Josephine Cox

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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (24 Oct 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007202784
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007202782
  • Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 10.6 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 19,705 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #10 in  Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism > Literary Studies > 20th Century
    #32 in  Books > Fiction > Novelists
    #40 in  Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism > Novels & Novelists

Product Description

Product Description

A fascinating insight into the life of one of the country's bestselling and best-loved authors, marrying her work with her extraordinary life, and looking at her rise to fame and fortune against all the odds. 'Everything I have touched in my life figures in my books. Every single book I write has something that has happened to me or my family or to my friends.' Josephine Cox was born in Blackburn during its decline as the cotton-weaving capital of the world. Life was hard but characterful, the joys and tragedies of her youth later inspiring her multi-million selling novels. One of ten children, Josephine knew poverty, hunger and charity. Between births, her mother worked in the cotton mills, her father on the roads. Sleeping up to six in a bed, her family lived in the tightly packed, working-class terraces of Blackburn. But Josephine never felt victimised or shamed. Transforming their closed-in community into one that inspired 'another kind of love, a deep sense of belonging' were the characters Josephine writes about in her novels with such fondness and feeling. But alas reality was not always so easy. Hand in hand with poverty came deprivation and domestic difficulties. At the end of her tether, Jo's mother gathered her children around her in the bus station one day and announced they were leaving Blackburn. Josephine was fourteen years old. Not only did she lose her friends, she also lost her brothers too who were left behind. 'Belonging to a street, to a place, to a family, is the most important thing.' Out of this tremendous loss, Josephine's novels were born.


About the Author

Piers Dudgeon is a writer, editor and photographer. Born in 1949, he worked for ten years as a publisher in London before starting his own company and developing books with authors as diverse as John Fowles, Ted Hughes, Daphne du Maurier, Catherine Cookson, Peter Ackroyd and Susan Hill. He has written fifteen works of non-fiction, including the no. 1 bestselling biography of Catherine Cookson, The Girl from Leam Lane, as well as feature articles for the Observer, the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday.

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Child of the North: Memories of a Northern Childhood
48% buy the item featured on this page:
Child of the North: Memories of a Northern Childhood 3.0 out of 5 stars (3)
£5.47
Born Bad
20% buy
Born Bad 3.1 out of 5 stars (7)
£3.84
Girl on the Platform (Quick Reads)
19% buy
Girl on the Platform (Quick Reads) 2.5 out of 5 stars (8)
£1.99
Journey's End
7% buy
Journey's End 4.6 out of 5 stars (11)
£4.98

 

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Time Out Review, 3 Nov 2006
Since 1987, Josephine Cox has been a prolific and successful spinner of
yarns, weaving memories of the Blackburn of her childhood and emotional
attachment to this 'town of soot and grime and dreary, closed-in
streets'
into textured backcloths for her sagas. Blackburn's rise to
'cotton-weaving
capital of the world' in 1907, when 79,403 power looms enslaved a
workforce
of fleet-footed lip-readers, had declined by the 1950s. In Child of the
North, Piers Dudgeon, inter-lacing dialogues with the author, personal
comment and quotation from the novels, explores the relationship between
personal experiences of hardship and deprivation that motivate Cox's
writing
and the transformation of these memories into fiction. The book expands
into
an involving history of a town where weaver poets wrote in celebration
of
the handloom weaver tradition and railed against the poverty, misery and
exploitation engendered by the rise of the mill. A town where 'the
Industrial Revolution squeezed nature out of the town' and dark acrid
smoke
shut out the sunlight.
The poignancy of the narrative is enhanced by the apt choice of
photographs. For one who, as a child, spent many a wet Saturday
afternoon
over a poached egg on toast in Booth's café, gazing down through the
window
at the market below or at the customers in the Palatine café opposite,
this
is more than a walk down memory lane.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A real mixture, 23 May 2008
By Archy (ALTRINCHAM, Cheshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
I have never read any of Josephine Cox's novels, but was given this. It's a strange hybrid. It's not an auotbiography - Josephine's voice is heard rarely, and mostly through the voices of her characters. It's not a biography either; Gus Dudgeon has clearly read the novels, but there's little in depth analysis of Josephine. Instead, there are large chunks of passages from the novels (which seem very samey to me). There is some social history, in an interesting chapter about the roots of Blackburn's cotton trade, which even manages to include the story of the Pendle witches. The last chapter is mostly full plotlines from recent novels, which would spoil them for new readers. Yet there's little genuine literary criticism. I found it quite enjoyable, final chapter aside, though I imagine anyone who has read the novels and is looking for a little more, might be disappointed. Even the excellent photos have captions lifted from elsewhere in the text. Browse before you buy!
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9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars dissapointing, 4 May 2006
By C. P. Kurzfeld - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Very dissapointing, coming from the north myself I was really looking forward to reading this book but it is mostly made up from passages of her novels. As I have read most of her novels, finding her biography made up mainly from these was a huge letdown - I stopped reading halfway through and will probably never pick it up again.
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