Andre Norton - Biography

Biography

Alice Mary Norton was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Her parents were Adalbert Freely Norton, who owned a rug company, and Bertha Stemm Norton. She began writing at Collinwood High School in Cleveland, under the tutelage of Miss Sylvia Cochrane. She was the editor of a literary page in the school's paper called The Collinwood Spotlight for which she wrote short stories. During this time, she wrote her first book—Ralestone Luck, which was eventually published as her second novel in 1938, the first being The Prince Commands in 1934.

After graduating from high school in 1930, Norton planned to become a teacher and began studying at Flora Stone Mather College of Western Reserve University. However, in 1932 she had to leave because of the Depression and began working for the Cleveland Library System, where she remained for 18 years, latterly in the children's section of the Nottingham Branch Library in Cleveland. In 1934, she legally changed her name to Andre Alice Norton, a pen name she had adopted to increase her marketability, since boys were the main audience for fantasy. From 1940 to 1941, she worked as a special librarian in the cataloging department of the Library of Congress, involved in a project related to alien citizenship. The project was abruptly terminated upon the American entry into World War II.

In 1941, she bought a bookstore called the Mystery House in Mount Rainier, Maryland. The business failed and she returned to the Cleveland Public Library until 1950. She then began working as a reader for publisher and editor Martin Greenberg at the Gnome Press company, where she remained until 1958, after which she became a full-time professional author.

Norton's first published science fiction, the novella "The People of the Crater", appeared in Fantasy Book in 1947, under the "Andrew North" byline. Her first fantasy novel, Huon of the Horn, was published by Harcourt Brace under her own byline in 1951. Her first science fiction novel, Star Man's Son 2250 A.D., appeared in 1952.

She became a prolific novelist in the 1950s, with many of her books published for the juvenile market, at least in their hardcover editions. She published more than a dozen different sf novel series, but her longest, and longest running project was the "Witch World" sequence, which began as a set of six novels as paperback originals from 1963 to 1968, then grew, beginning in the 1970s, to include several dozen volumes, including collaborations and shared-world anthologies.

Norton was twice nominated for the Hugo Award, in 1964 for the novel Witch World and in 1967 for the novelette "Wizard's World." She was nominated three times for the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement, winning the award in 1998. Norton won a number of other genre awards, and regularly had works appear in the Locus annual "best of year" polls.

She was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies.

In later years, as Norton's health became uncertain, she moved to Florida in November 1966, and then to Murfreesboro, Tennessee. From February 21, 2005, she was under hospice care. She died at home on March 17, 2005, of congestive heart failure.

Her final complete novel, Three Hands for Scorpio, was published on April 1, 2005. She was collaborating with Jean Rabe on the sequel to her 1979 novel Quag Keep, the Greyhawk novel Return to Quag Keep, when she died. Return to Quag Keep was completed by Rabe and published in 2006.

On February 20, 2005, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, which had earlier honored her with its Grand Master Award in 1983, announced the creation of the Andre Norton Award, to be given each year for an outstanding work of fantasy or science fiction for the young adult literature market, beginning in 2006. While the Andre Norton Award is not a Nebula Award, the eligibility requirements and award procedures are the same as those for the Nebula Awards.

Often called the Grande Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy by biographers such as J. M. Cornwell and organizations such as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Publishers Weekly, and Time, Andre Norton wrote novels for over 70 years. She had a profound influence on the entire genre, having over 300 published titles read by at least four generations of science fiction and fantasy readers and writers. Notable authors who cite her influence include Greg Bear, Lois McMaster Bujold, C. J. Cherryh, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Tanya Huff, Mercedes Lackey, Charles de Lint, Joan D. Vinge, David Weber, K. D. Wentworth, and Catherine Asaro.