

Unfortunately, her lack of a college degree prevented her from getting a promotion.ĭespite long hours at the library, Alice continued writing and published her first novel, The Prince Commands, in 1934. In her eighteen years of work for the library, she spent time in thirty-eight of the forty branches, becoming a troubleshooter for the system.


Her longest job was with the Cleveland Public Library system, where she started in 1932 as an assistant librarian at the Nottingham Branch's Children's section. She found work to support her family and took all the evening journalism and writing classes she could find. She spent her freshman year in study to become a history teacher, but was forced to quit when the Great Depression hit the country. In 1930, Alice started school at the Flora Stone Mather College of Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University). She used study hall to begin her first novel, Ralestone Luck in 1938, it became her second published book. At school, her good grades were rewarded with more books, and she edited a fiction page for the Collingwood High School newspaper. Alice found them very supportive of her early writing they were her first proofreaders and editors. Seventeen years separated Alice from her sister, so it was easier for her to bond with her parents. "When I started to read by myself," she says, "it was Uncle Wiggley, the Old Mother West Wind stories, and all of the Oz books." Her mother started reading aloud to her when she was two, and Alice remembers being able to understand and follow Little Women two years later. Her literary career started out with weekly family trips to the library under the influence of her mother, who recited poetry to Alice as she cleaned the house. Ohio Reading Road Trip | Andre Norton BiographyĪndre Norton, now considered the "Grand Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy," was born Alice Mary Norton on February 17, 1912, in Cleveland, Ohio.
