Dorothy Cowlin

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Dorothy Cowlin (16 August 1911 – 10 January 2010) was a British novelist, poet, newspaper columnist and article writer with strong associations to North Yorkshire.

During her life she wrote eight novels which were all published by Jonathan Cape, four biographical novels aimed at younger readers, and four collections of poetry.^[1][2] All her work was published under her maiden name rather than her married name, Dorothy Whalley.

Dorothy Cowlin was born in Grantham, a market town in Lincolnshire, England in 1911.^[2] She studied Geography^[3] at the University of Manchester and was awarded a BA.^[2] She was a teacher in Stockport^[2] before marrying Ronald Whalley on 12 April 1941 at the parish church of Hampton Bishop whilst he was serving as a chiropodist in the RAF Hospital at Locking.^[4] At that time a married woman could not continue working, so she turned her attention to writing which she had always had an ambition to do.^[3] She had a single daughter on 15 October 1942 whom she named Virginia after Virginia Woolf, an author whose work she greatly admired.^[5] Her first novel, "Penny To Spend", was published by Jonathan Cape in 1941 and was followed by seven others, but her style of writing fell out of favour,^[6] and she turned her attention to poetry.

The family first moved to Pickering, North Yorkshire in late Autumn 1948 when Ronald came to teach at a school in the neighbouring village of Thornton-le-Dale. Dorothy fell in love with the countryside of the nearby Dales, and her writing often used the local environment as a background^[7] She wrote columns for Malton newspaper the Gazette & Herald for more than 30 years, a long running series of articles for Scarborough's weekly paper The Mercury, and articles for magazines like The Dalesman, Yorkshire Life and Yorkshire Ridings, which often concerned local history and her own reminiscences.^[6] A collection of 25 articles that originally appeared in the Gazette & Herald was published in 2000 under the title Do You Remember? Pickering 50 years ago. Her poems appeared in The Dalesman and many other magazines.^[8]

Her poem The Sound of Rain has been featured by BBC Radio 4's programme Poetry Please,^[9] and her poem Pennine Tunnel was the winner of a competition run by Yorkshire Television's magazine programme Calendar and judged by David Morley^[10]

• Penny to Spend (1941)

Her first novel was advertised in the Glasgow Herald where its theme was described as “an experiment with time”;^[11] something which was noted in a review by Stevie Smith to be impossible, but made plausible by the author's skill.^[12]

• Winter Solstice (first published 1942 by Jonathan Cape in the UK and 1943 by Macmillan in the US; republished 1991 by Merlin Press with an introduction by Gabriele Griffin^{[note 1]})

Miss Cowlin has taken a very interesting subject for her second essay in fiction, and in the first half of her story has handled it convincingly and with literary skill. Her chief character is Alexandra Gollen, a woman of twenty-one when we first meet her, paralysed from the waist down and with the mentality of a child of twelve, at which age after a horrible childhood she lost her memory and the use of her legs as the result of a very severe shock. She lives in a small Lancashire town, and is cared for by her twin half-brothers who have a small tailor's business, working in the room in which she passes her dreamy, contented life. The influence that largely determines her recovery is the coming of Iris Young, a secondary schoolmistress of thirty with a vigorous and lively personality, and the steps that lead to Alexandra's recovery of the power to walk, and to the much slower revival of her earlier memories are probable and well-considered. The second half of the book does not reach the same level of achievement. Alexandra's unhealthy and overdrawn passion for Iris becomes very tedious, and we lose the sympathy and interest that she inspired in her earlier paralysed condition and in the first stages of her convalescence. We leave her as a whole, though slightly abnormal, human being on the verge of a natural but somewhat perfunctory love affair.
The writing, despite occasional marks of amateurishness, is vivid and graphic, and if the development of Alexandra's character had been on more attractive lines, Winter Solstice might have made an original and fascinating story. As it is, we are left with the feeling that our natural desire for her recovery has not been justifiably satisfied.

— Times Literary Supplement, 7 November 1942

Winter Solstice, first published in 1942 by Jonathan Cape, is a curious and compelling novel, detailing a psychological drama dressed in twentieth-century garb against a social backdrop of decidedly Victorian fabric.

— Gabriele Griffin, from the introduction of the 1991 republication

• The Holly and the Ivy (1950)

Her two characters are brilliantly drawn, and some of the passages between them are narrated in a way difficult to forget. In this as in other respects The Holly and the Ivy leaves the impression that uncommon reserves of thought and feeling have gone to its writing.

— The Scotsman^{[full citation needed]}

• The Slow Train Home (1951)

Miss Cowlin writes with distinction and great beauty, and she has an understanding of human motives which breathes life into everyone whom she depicts. It is true to describe this novel as romantic, but it is the best sort of realism as well.

— Truth^{[full citation needed]}

A good well-written honest book. Miss Cowlin uses prose of great clarity, and her writing is imbued with an unusual quality of charity. Her descriptions, both of people and places, have great lucidity, and she transcribes dialect – with a more accurate ear than most.

— Marghanita Laski, The Spectator^{[full citation needed]}

A very moving book, and a convincingly human one.

— John O'London's Weekly^{[full citation needed]}

• Rowanberry Wine (1952)

Here is a novel which states fearlessly the grimmer side of married middle life, when love requires grit rather than salt.

— The Listener^{[full citation needed]}

Fluent, intelligent and vivacious.

— The Spectator^{[full citation needed]}

Her prose is beautiful, and her vivid descriptions of the hot summer weather among the hills remain in the mind. This is a considerable advance on her last novel, and she is a novelist whom her adopted county may be glad to claim.

— The Yorkshire Post^{[full citation needed]}

• An End and a Beginning (1954)
• Draw the Well Dry (1955)
• The Pair of Them (1956)

• Greenland Seas: The story of Scoresby the whaler (published 1965 by E. J. Arnold & Son Limited of Leeds, with illustrations by Ray Bailey)
• A Woman in the Desert: The story of Gertrude Bell (published 1967 by Frederick Muller Limited of London, with illustrations by Penny Carey)
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning (published 1968 by Frederick Muller, with illustrations by Sheila Bewley)
• Cleopatra: Queen of Egypt (published 1970 by Wayland Publishers)

• The Sound of Rain (1991)
• Winter Rooks (1998)
• Do you remember? Pickering 50 Years Ago (2000, Blackthorn Press)
• Pigeon Past (2002)
• The Sound of Rain and 99 other poems (2009, self-published)

Wikiquote has quotations related to Dorothy Cowlin.

• "The Sound of Rain" The Collected Poetry of Dorothy Cowlin, 30 April 2021
• "The way of the Wolds" An article published in the Gazette & Herald, 14 June 2006
• "When words mean so much more" An article published in the Gazette & Herald, 27 December 2001
• "On the grand tour with the over 50s" An article published in the Gazette & Herald, 30 November 2006
• "All change in Pickering" An article published in the Gazette & Herald, 26 February 2003
• "The nuns of Pickering" An article published in the Gazette & Herald, 25 September 2002
• "Meet one of the founding fathers of Beck Isle Museum" An article published in the Gazette & Herald, 14 March 2002