Ask the Author: Mary Beth Norton
Answered Questions (5)
Mary Beth Norton
What inspires me to research, and then write, is when I find intriguing historical material that raises questions in my mind. For example, when I was researching my PhD dissertation on the loyalists, I could see the importance for them of a period (the year 1774) that historians usually passed largely over as they discussed the origins of the American Revolution--they tended to skip from the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 to the battles of Lexington & Concord in April 1775. So that's what led to my current project.
Mary Beth Norton
If I can't think of what comes next (or first), I do something completely different: go for a walk, a swim, a bike ride, or play a guitar. Anything to get my mind off of my problem. Then after a while a solution usually comes to me.
Mary Beth Norton
I am currently researching a book on the months immediately prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution in April 1775, a topic that returns me to my first interest in early American history, the revolutionary era, the subject of my first two books. I am truly enjoying it.
Mary Beth Norton
write! write! write! then revise! revise! revise!
Mary Beth Norton
Separated by their Sex was inspired by a disjunction: in research for my book Liberty's Daughters (which began in approximately 1750) I learned that women were very aware of their gender and saw themselves as inferior to men. But in research for my next book, Founding Mothers & Fathers, I learned that seventeenth-century American women (to c. 1670) had very different conceptions of themselves. What had happened between 1670 & 1750 to change things? I asked myself. Separated by their Sex gives the answer I found, which required work in and about England as well as America.
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