Dear Booksellers,
When I came to adapt my best-selling non-fiction, Normal Women: 900 years of making history, for teens, I was determined that it would be a genuine history book: challenging, authentic, controversial and accessible – a shorter, but not lesser, version of the award-winning 900 pages.
Now I’ve finished it – a year on top of the ten years that it took me to write the original – I see it as a bitesize version of its bigger sister: concise, an easier read – but just as important.
Normal Women is the first long-form history of England with women at the centre of the story. Events that we think of as completely male-driven are told with an eye to the women in the shadows – and the history is upended! Take sport – the first prize-fighters and sprint race winners were women. A woman invented the golf handicap rules, and during World War I and after, women were the best footballers – until they were banned from playing.
I describe an almost infinite variety of ‘normal women’ – whose extraordinary lives were normal for their time. I show ‘normal women’ going to war, ploughing fields, writing, and loving. They rode chargers in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currencies and built ships, corn mills and houses as part of their everyday lives.
“Being exceptional or heroic – or even deviant and inadequate – is normal for women.”
They committed crimes, worshipped many gods, cooked and nursed, invented and rioted. Being exceptional or heroic – or even deviant and inadequate – is normal for women.
I tell how women adapt to be whatever society demands: there is no such thing as ‘women’s nature’. When society needs women at work, normal women are told they are ambitious, hard-working and physically strong. When society needs women to leave profitable and interesting work to men, normal women are told they are weak, domestic, and their children need them at home.
Even though this is a proud history of women, it’s not a book only for girls, but for everyone. In these pages, anyone can find the history of themselves. In this world that can be so confusing and disheartening, I want young people to read it and know they are not alone, that neither boys nor girls need to fear the future. Women have done everything in the past – and women can do anything in the future – and this sets us all free.
Good luck with this – my most treasured book.
Philippa Gregory
About the book
9780008725075, PBO, £10.99 27 Feb 2025
Today, when we think of women of the past, we often think of the 1800s and 1900s – crinolines and stage coaches, bonnets and balls – a time when women were told they were naturally inferior to men, and must stay at home while men went out to work and have fun.
HUGE MISTAKE! There is so much more to women’s history than bonnets and big dresses! Ordinary women have been doing extraordinary things FOR EVER – it just didn’t make the history books (written by men!).
Join multi-award-winning author Philippa Gregory as she tells the story of ordinary English women, making history for 900 years. Meet farmers, highwaywomen, pirates, ‘female husbands’, slaves, soldiers, criminals, writers, inventors, rioters and more – protesting, working, playing, taking risks, getting rich (and getting even!). Their story is one of ingenuity, diversity, rebellion, survival – and sisterhood.
The bestselling, critically acclaimed women’s history from blockbuster author Philippa Gregory – adapted for teen readers!
