Success for historical book by North Yorks writer

Maggie Cobbet says Workhouse Orphan was inspired by an event she discovered in her own family history.

This stalwart of Ripon Writers’ Group, who recently became the group’s new president, launched the book with a series of events in Harrogate and Ripon to a great reception.

Aimed at the 10-14 age range of readers, Maggie Workhouse Orphan is set in the last years of Victorian England and tells the story of brave teenager David Dawson, a workhouse orphan who is sent from London to a mining village in the former West Riding of Yorkshire.

Stuck in an exhausting - and dangerous - new life, how will the youngster rescue his younger brothers and sister he has been forced to leave behind?

With previous books including three collections of short stories - Anyone For Murder?, Had We But World Enough and Swings & Roundabouts- and two novels - Shadows of the Past and Wheels on Fire, Maggie went the extra mile in researching her latest publication.

She cites her main sources as the National Coal Mining Museum for England, Beamish Museum and Sharow View, the former workhouse recreated by the Ripon Museum Trust.

Maggie was involved in Ripon Poetry Festival in October and her library talks include Ripon and Harrogate where she took part in new group Promoting Yorkshire Authors’ Christmas Event.

At one point acting as an extra on TV soap Emmerdale, in the past she has served on the Ripon Writers’ Group committee as secretary, vice chair and chair.

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