Josephine Cox, bestselling novelist of family sagas, dies at 82
Josephine Cox, the proflic author who grew up in poverty in Blackburn and went on to sell millions of copies of her family dramas, has died at the age of 82.
Her publisher HarperCollins said today that Cox died “peacefully” on Friday. The author of more than 60 books, written over a career which spanned more than three decades, Cox sold more than 20m copies of her family sagas, which combined romance and tragedy to dramatic, bestselling effect.
“Josephine has left a legacy, not only through her stories that touched the hearts of millions, but as a woman who led the way for others by forging a path from humble beginnings to the top of the bestseller lists,” said HarperCollins executive publisher Kimberley Young.
Young described Cox as “an utter force of nature who inspired all around her”. She said Cox wrote back to “each and every” fan who contacted her, “creating an army of readers who were as loyal to her and she was to them”.
Born in Blackburn, Cox was one of 10 children, and often spoke of how she grew up in poverty. “We hardly had enough money for food and clothes, let alone books,” she told the Guardian in 2008. “But I found a little green leather book of Wordsworth’s poems on a tip. I hid it so nobody could take it. It was very precious to me.”
She married her husband Ken at the age of 16, and had two sons, going on to study at college when they started school, and winning a place at Cambridge University, which she was forced to turn down as she couldn’t live away from home. She went on to become a teacher, writing her first novel, Her Father’s Sins, in just six weeks while she was hospitalised with an illness. Following Queenie, a girl who remains resilient in the face of a tyrannical father, it was published in 1987.
“Every one of us has something deep inside that we would love to do, and then life takes over and you don’t get to do it. But when I was teaching, I was confined to bed in hospital because I was very ill,” she told the Guardian. “One of my friends brought me an A4 book and half a dozen pens because I was always talking about ‘that book’ I was going to write about growing up in Blackburn. I wrote the book in six weeks in the hospital. It was a culmination of everything that was in me from the age of eight.”
Cox’s most recent book, Two Sisters, was published in February. The story of two sisters who long to escape their lives of drudgery on their father’s farm, it hit the bestseller charts. Cox, who said “could never imagine a single day without writing, and it’s been that way since as far back as I can remember”, was also regularly one of the most borrowed authors from the UK’s libraries, and in 2011 spearheaded a campaign to prevent library closures, calling it “absolutely appalling” that they were at risk.
HarperCollins chief executive Charlie Redmayne said she was “ one of our most beloved writers”. “Publishing is built on authors such as Josephine Cox, writers who know instinctively what their readers want and work diligently, and with the utmost dedication, to deliver it,” he said.
