Catherine Gaskin Cornberg: born April 2nd, 1929; died September 6th, 2009:CATHERINE GASKIN, who has died aged 80, was the author of 21 bestsellers which were widely translated and sold more than 40 million copies. She mainly wrote romantic fiction and was known as "The Queen of Storytellers".
Born in 1929, she was the youngest of the six children of James Gaskin and his wife Mary (née Harrington) of Blackrock, Co Louth. The family emigrated to Australia within a few months of her birth, and she grew up in Coogee, Sydney, near the beach.
She attended the local parochial school and continued her education at Holy Cross, Woollahra. She acquired a love of reading but music was her passion.
She studied piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music while a school student but turned to writing when she realised that she lacked the talent necessary to successfully pursue a career in music.
She wrote her first novel, This Other Eden, while still at school. It was published in 1946 when she was 17, and was described in this newspaper as "an astonishingly mature book".
Following the publication of her second novel, With Every Year(1947), she moved to England.
There followed three consecutive bestsellers - Dust in Sunlight(1950), All Else is Folly(also 1950) and Daughter of the House(1952). She wrote quickly not least because she had to support her sister Pip (Moira), who was ill, and also in response to her publisher's demands. She later came to regard the four novels from 1947 to 1952 as pot-boilers, popular though they were. However, they enabled her to rent a centrally-heated flat in London, which was essential for her sister's health.
She spent considerable time researching her books. Sara Dane(1955) took 2½ years to research and write. It was based on the true story of Mary Reibey, who was sentenced to transportation for what was little more than a child's prank, but "overcame the stigma of her conviction, and rose to a position of wealth and prominence among the citizens of early New South Wales".
Reviewed in The Irish Times,it was described as "one of those competent and conscientious evocations of the past, without the frills of deep thought or shallow levity, which women writers seem to do better than men".
Worldwide sales topped two million, and in 1982 the book was adapted for television in Australia.
The File on Devlin(1965), an espionage thriller, was also filmed for television.
In 1955 she met and married Sol Cornberg, an American television producer 21 years her senior who was on secondment to GTV in Australia. Married in New York, the couple lived in Manhattan for 10 years.
They moved to St Thomas in the Virgin Islands but, unable to settle, moved to Ireland. They set up house in a cottage at Ballymacahara, near Rathnew, Co Wicklow, where she brought her gardening skills to bear on 30 acres of pasture. She had no children. "My own family was a terribly unhappy one. I wouldn't wish a repeat of that on anyone."
In 1981 the couple moved to the Isle of Man. Her last book, The Charmed Circle, was published in 1988, and thereafter she devoted her time to her husband who was now in ill health.
After he died in 1999, she returned to Sydney. Living close to the city at a villa in a retirement village in Mosman, she enjoyed the opera, concerts and the theatre while catching up with old friends and family. She is survived by her sister-in-law Norma, niece Debbie, nephew Greg and stepsons David and Peter.