Normal Women: Making History for 900 Years

About this book

Do you think that women in the past only went to balls and looked for a husband? Think again! 

Before the Normans arrived in 1066, women could marry or divorce if they chose and they owned land. In the Middle Ages (1066–1348), sheep shearing, brewing ale, and baking bread were all the business of women. 

Women worked in all kinds of trades throughout history. In the eighteenth century, one woman pedlar, who sold ribbons and stockings, was so successful that she bequeathed the poor the equivalent of £1.5 million in today’s money!  

Philippa Gregory has extensively researched the lives of normal women over the last nine centuries and the result is an eye-opening, inclusive read. Women often did well in an area first, and then society would stop them from doing it. For the last 900 years women of every class and in every corner of the land have been working, loving, living – and fighting to be seen and heard. 

Gregory highlights some astonishing individuals. Women soldiers, doctors, artists, writers, inventors, protestors, spies, factory workers – and wives and mothers.  

Adapted from a book for adults of the same name, this is a fascinating read and a must-have in any school library.