Normal Women
Nine Hundred Years of Making History
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $25.63
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Written by:
-
Philippa Gregory
About this listen
The #1 New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her magnum opus—a landmark work of feminist nonfiction that radically redefines our understanding of the extraordinary roles ordinary women played throughout British history and “should be included in every history lesson” (Glamour UK)
“As author and lead narrator, Gregory’s passion for this topic is evidence in her confident narration. . . . This audio should be savored. . . . This stellar work will be of interest to feminists, historians, Anglophiles, and those who like learning more about women throughout history.”—Booklist (starred review)
Did you know that there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? That the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was started and propelled by women who were protesting a tax on women? Or that celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin believed not just that women were naturally inferior to men, but that they’d evolve to become ever more inferior?
These are just a few of the startling findings you will learn from reading Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women. In this ambitious and groundbreaking book, she tells the story of England over 900 years, for the very first time placing women—some fifty per cent of the population—center stage.
Using research skills honed in her work as one of our foremost historical novelists, Gregory trawled through court records, newspapers, and journals to find highwaywomen and beggars, murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, female husbands and hermits. The “normal women” you will meet in these pages went to war, ploughed the fields, campaigned, wrote, and loved. They rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency, and built ships, corn mills and houses. They committed crimes or treason, worshipped many gods, cooked and nursed, invented things, and rioted. A lot.
A landmark work of scholarship and storytelling, Normal Women chronicles centuries of social and cultural change—from 1066 to modern times—powered by the determination, persistence, and effectiveness of women.
“Lively, timely and gloriously energetic. Each page bursts with life, and every chapter swirls with personalities left out of traditional narratives of Britain’s past. Philippa Gregory has produced something rare and wonderful: a genuinely new history of [Britain], with women at its beating heart.”—Dan Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Plantagenets
“Stunning. . . . Full of surprises. . . . A brilliant, essential read.”—The Independent (UK)
©20322 Philippa Gregory (P)2023 HarperCollins PublishersYou may also enjoy...
-
Let's Pretend This Will Work
- A Novel
- Written by: Maddie Dawson
- Narrated by: Helen Laser
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After too many dates, thirtysomething Mimi Perkins is still single, unmoored, and longing for love. So when Ren Yardley—a handsome, divorced fellow drama teacher and single father—falls in love with her and proposes, she’s sure this is at last the good news her psychic predicted. Soon after proposing, Ren receives the devastating news that his ex-wife has been in a debilitating car accident, prompting him to temporarily move back into his former home to care for her and his daughters.
Written by: Maddie Dawson
-
Witchcraft
- A History in Thirteen Trials
- Written by: Marion Gibson
- Narrated by: Rose Akroyd
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.
-
-
If you’re curious about witches and their history: it’s a must !!
- By Brenda on 2024-12-09
Written by: Marion Gibson
-
Under the Paper Moon
- Written by: Shaina Steinberg
- Narrated by: Carrie Coello
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1942, and as far as her father knows, Evelyn Bishop, heiress to an aeronautics fortune, is working as a translator in London. In truth, Evelyn—daring, beautiful, and as adept with a rifle as she is in five languages—has joined the Office of Strategic Services as a spy. Her goal is personal: to find her brother, who is being held as a POW in a Nazi labor camp. Through one high-risk mission after another, she is paired with the reckless and rebellious Nick Gallagher, growing ever close to him until the war's end brings with it an act of deep betrayal.
-
-
anachronistic almost to the point of ridulous
- By Tiffany on 2024-11-15
Written by: Shaina Steinberg
-
Sipsworth
- Written by: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.
-
-
Absolutely loved this novel
- By Mer on 2024-12-11
Written by: Simon Van Booy
-
The Flower Sisters
- Written by: Michelle Collins Anderson
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione, Andrea Gallo, L.J. Ganser, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.
-
-
Enjoyable
- By PWL on 2024-10-04
Written by: Michelle Collins Anderson
-
The Light Eaters
- How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
- Written by: Zoë Schlanger
- Narrated by: Zoë Schlanger
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.
-
-
so fascinating
- By Brittany on 2024-07-31
Written by: Zoë Schlanger
-
Let's Pretend This Will Work
- A Novel
- Written by: Maddie Dawson
- Narrated by: Helen Laser
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After too many dates, thirtysomething Mimi Perkins is still single, unmoored, and longing for love. So when Ren Yardley—a handsome, divorced fellow drama teacher and single father—falls in love with her and proposes, she’s sure this is at last the good news her psychic predicted. Soon after proposing, Ren receives the devastating news that his ex-wife has been in a debilitating car accident, prompting him to temporarily move back into his former home to care for her and his daughters.
Written by: Maddie Dawson
-
Witchcraft
- A History in Thirteen Trials
- Written by: Marion Gibson
- Narrated by: Rose Akroyd
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.
-
-
If you’re curious about witches and their history: it’s a must !!
- By Brenda on 2024-12-09
Written by: Marion Gibson
-
Under the Paper Moon
- Written by: Shaina Steinberg
- Narrated by: Carrie Coello
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1942, and as far as her father knows, Evelyn Bishop, heiress to an aeronautics fortune, is working as a translator in London. In truth, Evelyn—daring, beautiful, and as adept with a rifle as she is in five languages—has joined the Office of Strategic Services as a spy. Her goal is personal: to find her brother, who is being held as a POW in a Nazi labor camp. Through one high-risk mission after another, she is paired with the reckless and rebellious Nick Gallagher, growing ever close to him until the war's end brings with it an act of deep betrayal.
-
-
anachronistic almost to the point of ridulous
- By Tiffany on 2024-11-15
Written by: Shaina Steinberg
-
Sipsworth
- Written by: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.
-
-
Absolutely loved this novel
- By Mer on 2024-12-11
Written by: Simon Van Booy
-
The Flower Sisters
- Written by: Michelle Collins Anderson
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione, Andrea Gallo, L.J. Ganser, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.
-
-
Enjoyable
- By PWL on 2024-10-04
Written by: Michelle Collins Anderson
-
The Light Eaters
- How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
- Written by: Zoë Schlanger
- Narrated by: Zoë Schlanger
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.
-
-
so fascinating
- By Brittany on 2024-07-31
Written by: Zoë Schlanger
-
Tripping on Utopia
- Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science
- Written by: Benjamin Breen
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley....
Written by: Benjamin Breen
-
The Great River
- The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi
- Written by: Boyce Upholt
- Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over thousands of years, the Mississippi watershed was home to millions of Indigenous people who regarded "the great river" with awe and respect, adorning its banks with astonishing spiritual earthworks. But European settlers and American pioneers had a different vision: the river was a foe to conquer. In this landmark work of natural history, Boyce Upholt tells the epic story of human attempts to own and contain the Mississippi River, from Thomas Jefferson's expansionist land hunger through today's era of environmental concern
Written by: Boyce Upholt
-
The Curse of Pietro Houdini
- A Novel
- Written by: Derek B. Miller
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Heartfelt, powerfully engaging, and in the tradition of Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, this is a work of storytelling bravado: a thrilling action-packed art heist, an imaginative chronicle of forgotten history, and a poignant coming-of-age epic where a child navigates one of the most morally complex fronts of World War II and lives to tell the tale.
-
-
Amazing story
- By Karen Fleming on 2024-11-01
Written by: Derek B. Miller
-
Memories of the Lost
- A Novel
- Written by: Barbara O'Neal
- Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Months after her mother passes away, artist Tillie Morrisey sees a painting in a gallery that leaves her inexplicably lightheaded and unsteady. When a handsome stranger comes to her aid, their connection is so immediate it seems fated, though Liam is only visiting for a few days. Working on her own art has always been a refuge, but after discovering a document among her mother’s belongings that suggests Tillie’s life has been a lie, she begins to suffer from a series of fugue states, with memories surfacing that she isn’t even sure are her own.
-
-
Waiting for something big, but never happened.
- By Ashley P on 2024-11-30
Written by: Barbara O'Neal
-
The Stepford Wives
- Written by: Ira Levin
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, Grover Gardner
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joanna Eberhart is a creative, self-possessed wife and mother, newly arrived in seemingly idyllic Stepford, Connecticut. But as she and her family begin settling in, she’s jarred by the unaccountable sameness of the local wives: all flawlessly attractive, with perfectly maintained homes—and little seeming interest in anything else. As curiosity turns to concern, Joanna finds herself unraveling a web of malice that threatens her very existence.
-
-
Elegantly Read and Perfectly Unsettling
- By Mara H on 2024-05-10
Written by: Ira Levin
-
The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson
- A Novel
- Written by: Ellen Baker
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister” to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves.
-
-
Lovely Characters
- By Anonymous User on 2024-11-18
Written by: Ellen Baker
-
Anansi's Gold
- The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World
- Written by: Yepoka Yeebo
- Narrated by: Jude Owusu
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Ghana achieved independence from Britain in 1957, it instantly became a target for home-grown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to claim whatever assets colonialism hadn’t already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the new nation’s inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the country’s gold overseas. Into this big lie stepped one of history’s most charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi.
Written by: Yepoka Yeebo
-
Women in White Coats
- How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine
- Written by: Olivia Campbell
- Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 1900s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness—a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society. Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Lizzie Garret Anderson and Sophie Jex-Blake fought for a woman's place in the male-dominated medical field.
-
-
very informative
- By ssm reader on 2022-03-02
Written by: Olivia Campbell
-
The Mango Tree
- A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony
- Written by: Annabelle Tometich
- Narrated by: Annabelle Tometich
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When journalist Annabelle Tometich picks up the phone one June morning, she isn’t expecting a collect call from an inmate at the Lee County Jail. And when she accepts, she certainly isn’t prepared to hear her mother’s voice on the other end of the line. However, explaining the situation to her younger siblings afterwards was easy; all she had to say was, “Mom shot at some guy. He was messing with her mangoes.” They immediately understood.
-
-
authentic and honest.
- By anne nonomus on 2024-11-17
Written by: Annabelle Tometich
-
Take the Long Way Home
- Written by: Rochelle Alers
- Narrated by: Jasmin Walker
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Freedom fighter, brilliant businessperson, devoted wife, master of languages, and ultimately, savior of a European dynasty. Claudia Patterson would become all of these—spurred on by the fiercely powerful loves and losses along the way … Denny Clark. An abused thirteen-year-old White boy whose life twelve-year-old Claudia saves—complicating her own life for years to come.
Written by: Rochelle Alers
-
If the Tide Turns
- Written by: Rachel Rueckert
- Narrated by: Pilar Witherspoon
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set during the Golden Age of Pirates and the shadowy aftermath of the Salem witch trials, this vivid literary debut is inspired by the captivating true story of real-life pirate Samuel Bellamy, combining high seas adventure, star-crossed longing, surprisingly timely questions about social justice and freedom, and the emotionally satisfying tale of one strong-willed young woman determined to choose her own path.
-
-
🥹
- By @haylingbookstorm on 2024-07-23
Written by: Rachel Rueckert
-
The Square of Sevens
- Written by: Laura Shepherd-Robinson
- Narrated by: Imogen Wilde
- Length: 20 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cornwall, 1730: A young girl known only as Red travels with her father making a living predicting fortunes using the ancient Cornish method of the Square of Sevens. Shortly before he dies, her father entrusts Red’s care to a gentleman scholar, along with a document containing the secret of the Square of Sevens technique.
-
-
Multiple surprising twists.
- By A. Prichard on 2024-01-07
Written by: Laura Shepherd-Robinson
What listeners say about Normal Women
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Shannon
- 2024-03-27
Fantastic!
Everyone should read this book! History lovers and feminists will find this enlightening and entertaining
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful