The years 1950–I saw the publication of three novels set in the North East of England. Catherine Cookson's Kate Hannigan (1950), was the first in a long line of novels about northern women who were to make their author the most famous ‘regional novelist’ in the world. Sid Chaplin's The Thin Seam (1950), was a short, incisive story about one night's coal-cutting on a Durham face. And Jack Common's Kiddar's Luck (1951), was the tale of Will Kiddar, a Newcastle lad growing up on the streets and corner-ends of Heaton just before and during the Great War. All of these fictions would come to be seen as landmarks in writing the North East, and each of their authors wrote about the working-class experience from an autobiographical point of view. Just what that experience was, and how it was offered and received, is the subject of this essay.

Catherine Cookson was born on 20 June 1906, at 5 Leam Lane, Tyne Dock, South Shields. If there was a doctor present we don't know, but we do know that one was present when ‘Kate Hannigan’ gave birth. Indeed, in the manner of all Cookson's strong women and sensitive heroes, it almost seems as if it was he – Dr Rodney Prince – who gave birth, and not Kate: