Catherine Gaskin

Catherine Gaskin (2 April 1929—6 September 2009) was an Irish–Australian romance novelist.^[1]

Gaskin was born in Dundalk Bay, County Louth, Ireland in 1929. When she was only three months old, her parents moved to Australia, settling in Coogee, a suburb of Sydney, where she grew up. Her first novel This Other Eden, was written when she was 15 and published two years later.^[2] After her second novel, With Every Year, was published, she moved to London. Three best-sellers followed: Dust in Sunlight (1950), All Else is Folly (1951), and Daughter of the House (1952).

She completed her best-known work, Sara Dane, on her 25th birthday in 1954, and it was published in 1955. It sold more than 2 million copies, was translated into a number of other languages, and was made into a television mini-series in Australia in 1982.^[3] This novel is loosely based on the life of the Australian convict businesswoman Mary Reibey, whose image has appeared on the Australian $20 note since 1994. Other novels included A Falcon for a Queen (1972) and The Summer of the Spanish Woman (1977).^[4]

Gaskin moved to Manhattan for ten years, after marrying a United States citizen. She then moved to the Virgin Islands, then in 1967 to Ireland, where she became an Irish citizen.^[4] She also lived on the Isle of Man.^[2] Her last novel was The Charmed Circle (1988). She then returned to Sydney, where she died in September 2009, aged 80, from ovarian cancer.

• This Other Eden (1947)
• With Every Year (1948)
• Dust in Sunlight (1950)
• All Else Is Folly (1951)
• Daughter of the House (1952)
• Sara Dane (1954)
• Blake's Reach (1958)
• Corporation Wife (1960)
• I Know My Love (1962)
• The Tilsit Inheritance (1963)
• The File On Devlin (1965)
• Edge of Glass (1967)
• Fiona (1970)
• A Falcon for a Queen (1972)
• The Property of a Gentleman (1974)
• The Lynmara Legacy (1975)
• The Summer of the Spanish Woma (1977)
• Family Affairs (1980)
• Promises (1982)
• The Ambassador's Women (1985)
• The Charmed Circle (1988)

• Selected Works (1978)

References

Sources

• Obituary, The Age, 24 September 2009, p. 25

• Gaskin at the Fantastic Fiction website