Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Encyclopedia
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the 2004 first novel by British writer Susanna Clarke
. An alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars
, it is based on the premise that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centring on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes/stereotypes. It has been described as a fantasy
novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel
. It overtly inverts the Industrial Revolution conception of the North/South divide in England: in this book the North is romantic and magical, rather than rational and concrete. It can be usefully compared and contrasted with Elizabeth Gaskell
's attempts at synthesising a unitary English identity in her fiction.
The narrative draws on various Romantic
literary traditions, such as the comedy of manners
, the Gothic tale
, and the Byronic hero
. The novel's language is a pastiche
of 19th-century writing styles, such as those of Jane Austen
and Charles Dickens
. Clarke describes the supernatural with mundane details. She supplements the text with almost 200 footnotes, outlining the backstory and an entire fictional corpus of magical scholarship.
Clarke began writing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in 1993; ten years later she submitted the manuscript for publication. It was accepted by Bloomsbury and published in September 2004, with illustrations by Portia Rosenberg. Bloomsbury was so sure of its success that they printed 250,000 hardcover copies. The novel was well-received by critics and reached number three on the New York Times bestseller list
. It was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel
.
with The Learned Society of York
Magicians, made up of "theoretical magicians" who believe that magic died out several hundred years earlier. The group is stunned to learn of a "practising magician", Mr Gilbert Norrell, who owns a large collection of "books of magic" he has spent years purchasing to keep out of the hands of others. Norrell proves his skill as a practical magician by making the statues in York Cathedral
speak. John Childermass, Mr Norrell's long-time servant, convinces a member of the group, John Segundus, to write about the event for the London
newspapers.
Segundus's article generates considerable interest in Mr Norrell, who moves to London to revive practical English magic. He enters society with the help of two gentlemen about town and meets a Cabinet
minister, Sir Walter Pole. To ingratiate himself, Mr Norrell attempts to recall Sir Walter's fiancée, Emma Wintertowne, from the dead. He summons a fairy—"the gentleman with thistle-down hair"—who strikes a bargain with Mr Norrell to restore Emma: half of her life will be spent with the fairy. After news spreads of Emma's resurrection and happy marriage to Sir Walter, magic becomes respectable and Mr Norrell performs various feats to aid the government in their ongoing war
against Napoleon.
While living in London, Mr Norrell encounters Vinculus, a street-magician, who relates a prophecy about a nameless slave and two magicians in England, but Norrell dismisses it. While travelling, Vinculus later meets Jonathan Strange, a young gentleman of property from Shropshire
, and recites the same prophecy, prompting Strange to become a magician. Meanwhile, the gentleman with thistle-down hair takes a liking to Stephen Black, Sir Walter's capable black butler, and promises to make him a king. Emma (now Lady Pole) lapses into lassitude. She rarely speaks, and her attempts to communicate her situation are confounded by magic. No doctor can cure her, and Mr Norrell claims that her problems cannot be solved by magic. Without the knowledge of the other characters, each evening she and Stephen are forced to attend balls held by the gentleman with thistle-down hair in the Faerie kingdom of Lost-Hope, where they dance all night long.
Lady Pole and Strange's wife, Arabella, become friends; several times Lady Pole attempts to tell Arabella about her forced nights of dancing at the fairy's castle in Lost-Hope, but each time she tells an unrelated story. Arabella also meets the gentleman with thistle-down hair at the Poles', but she assumes he is simply a resident. Without her husband's knowledge, the fairy plots to enchant her, although Stephen Black continually attempts to dissuade him.
The Stranges become a popular couple in London. The Cabinet ministers find Strange easier to deal with than Norrell, and they send him to assist the Duke of Wellington
on his Peninsular Campaign
. For over a year, Strange helps the army: he creates roads, moves towns, and makes dead men speak. After he returns, he fails to cure George III's
madness, although Strange manages to save the king from becoming enchanted by the gentleman with thistle-down hair, who is determined to make Stephen a king. Strange then helps defeat Napoleon at the horrific Battle of Waterloo
.
Frustrated with being Norrell's pupil, Strange pens a scathing review of a book outlining Norrell's theories on modern magic; in particular, Strange challenges Norrell's views of the Raven King. The English public splits into "Norrellites" and "Strangites"; Norrell and Strange part company, although not without regret. Strange returns home and works on his own book, The History and Practice of English Magic. Arabella goes missing, then suddenly reappears, sick and weak. Three days later she dies.
Strange settles in Venice
and meets Flora Greysteel. They become fond of each other and Strange's friends believe he may marry again. However, after experimenting with dangerous magic that threatens his sanity in order to gain access to Faerie, he discovers that Arabella is alive and being held captive. Immediately after he discovers this, the gentleman with the thistledown hair curses him with Eternal Night, an eerie darkness that engulfs him and follows him wherever he goes. Thereafter, Strange's strenuous efforts to rescue her take their toll, and his letters to friends begin to appear crazed. On Strange's orders, Flora moves with her family to Padua
and secludes herself inside her home, along with a mirror given to her by Strange. In England, the return of John Uskglass sparks a magical renaissance, but Norrell fails to grasp its significance. Strange returns and gives Childermass instructions which allow him to free Lady Pole from the fairy's enchantment. Strange, bringing "Eternal Night" with him, asks Norrell to help him undo Arabella's enchantment by summoning John Uskglass. Although they initially believe that they have succeeded, they later come to believe that their contact with John Uskglass was accidental. As a result of the imprecision of the fairy's curse, which was placed on "the English magician," Norrell is trapped along with Strange in the "Eternal Night," and they cannot move more than a certain distance from each other. They do succeed in sending Arabella to the mirror in Padua, where Flora is waiting for her. After the spells of the gentleman with thistle-down hair are broken, Stephen destroys him, and becomes the new king of Lost-Hope. Later Strange has a conversation with Arabella, making it unclear if he and Norrell are working to undo the eternal darkness they are both trapped in, and a vague hope that one day he will return to her. The final scene
depicts the coming of age of English magic, in which a bar is filled with arguing Norrellites and Strangites.
Clarke first developed the idea for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell during a year spent teaching English in Bilbao, Spain: "I had a kind of waking dream ... about a man in 18th century clothes in a place rather like Venice, talking to some English tourists. And I felt strongly that he had some sort of magical background – he'd been dabbling in magic, and something had gone badly wrong." She had also recently reread J. R. R. Tolkien
's The Lord of the Rings
and afterwards was inspired to "trying writing a novel of magic and fantasy".
After she returned from Spain in 1993, Clarke began to think seriously about writing her novel. She signed up for a five-day fantasy and science-fiction writing workshop, co-taught by writers Colin Greenland
and Geoff Ryman
. The students were expected to prepare a short story before attending, but Clarke only had "bundles" of material for her novel. From this she extracted "The Ladies of Grace Adieu
", a story about three women secretly practising magic who are discovered by the famous Jonathan Strange. Greenland was so impressed with the story that, without Clarke's knowledge, he sent an excerpt to his friend, the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman
. Gaiman later said, "It was terrifying from my point of view to read this first short story that had so much assurance ... It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata." Gaiman showed the story to his friend, science-fiction writer and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden
. Clarke learned of these events when Hayden called and offered to publish her story in his anthology Starlight 1
, which featured pieces by well-regarded science-fiction and fantasy writers. She accepted, and the book won the World Fantasy Award
for best anthology in 1997.
Clarke spent the next ten years working on the novel in her spare time, while editing cookbooks full-time for Simon & Schuster
in Cambridge
. She also published stories in Starlight 2 and Starlight 3; according to the New York Times Magazine, her work was known and appreciated by a small group of fantasy fans and critics on the internet. She was never sure, however, if she would finish her novel or if it would be published. Clarke tried to write for three hours each day, beginning at 5:30 am, but struggled to keep this schedule. Rather than writing the novel from beginning to end, she wrote in fragments and attempted to stitch them together. Clarke, admitting that the project was for herself and not the reader, "clung to this method" "because I felt that if I went back and started at the beginning, [the novel] would lack depth, and I would just be skimming the surface of what I could do. But if I had known it was going to take me ten years, I would never have begun. I was buoyed up by thinking that I would finish it next year, or the year after next." Clarke and Greenland fell in love while she was writing the novel and moved in together. Greenland did not read the novel until it was published.
Around 2001, Clarke "had begun to despair", and started looking for someone to help her finish and sell the book. Giles Gordon became her agent and sold the unfinished manuscript to Bloomsbury in early 2003, after two publishers rejected it as unmarketable. Bloomsbury were so sure the novel would be a success that they offered Clarke a £1 million advance. They printed 250,000 hardcover copies simultaneously in the United States, Britain, and Germany. Seventeen translations were begun before the first English publication was released. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was first published in the United States on 8 September 2004, in the United Kingdom on 30 September, and in other countries on 4 October.
Clarke’s style has frequently been described as a pastiche
, particularly of nineteenth-century British writers such as Charles Dickens
, Jane Austen
, and George Meredith
. Specifically, the novel's minor characters, including sycophant
s, rakes
, and the Duke of Wellington, evoke Dickens' caricatures. Laura Miller, in her review for Salon
, suggests that the novel is "about a certain literary voice
, the eminently civilized voice of early 19th century social comedy", exemplified by the works of Austen. The novel even uses obsolete spellings—chuse for choose and shewed for showed, for example—to convey this voice as well as the free indirect speech
made famous by Austen. Clarke herself notes that Austen's influence is particularly strong in the "domestic scenes, set in living rooms and drawing rooms where people mostly chat about magic" where Dickens's is prominent "any time there's more action or description". While many reviewers compare Clarke’s style to that of Austen, Gregory Feeley argues in his review for The Weekly Standard
that "the points of resemblance are mostly superficial". He writes that "Austen gets down to business briskly, while Clarke engages in a curious narrative strategy of continual deferral and delay." For example, Clarke mentions Jonathan Strange on the first page of the novel, but only in a footnote. He reappears in other footnotes throughout the opening but does not appear as a character in the text proper until a quarter of the way through the novel.
In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Clarke infuses her dry wit with prosaic quaintness. For example, the narrator notes: "It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week." As Michel Faber
explains in his review for The Guardian
, "here we have all the defining features of Clarke's style simultaneously: the archly Austenesque tone, the somewhat overdone quaintness ("upon the Tuesday"), the winningly matter-of-fact use of the supernatural, and drollness to spare." Gregory Maguire
notes in The New York Times
that Clarke even gently ridicules the genre of the novel itself: "[A gentleman] picks up a book and begins to read ... but he is not attending to what he reads and he has got to Page 22 before he discovers it is a novel – the sort of work which above all others he most despises – and he puts it down in disgust." Elsewhere, the narrator remarks, "Dear Emma does not waste her energies upon novels like other young women." The narrator's identity has been a topic of discussion, with Clarke declaring that said narrator is female and omniscient rather than a future scholar from within the real storyline as some had suggested.
Clarke's style extends to the novel's 185 footnotes, which document a meticulous invented history of English magic. At times, the footnotes dominate entire pages of the novel. Michael Dirda, in his review for The Washington Post
, describes these notes as "dazzling feats of imaginative scholarship", in which the anonymous narrator "provides elaborate mini-essays, relating anecdotes from the lives of semi-legendary magicians, describing strange books and their contents, speculating upon the early years and later fate of the Raven King". This extensive extra-textual apparatus is reminiscent of postmodernist works, such as David Foster Wallace's
Infinite Jest
(1996) and Thomas Pynchon's
Mason & Dixon
(1997), particularly as Clarke's notes humorously refer to previous notes in the novel. Clarke did not expect her publisher to accept the footnotes.
Feeley explains that Romantic poet
John Keats’s
"vision of enchantment and devastation following upon any dealings with faeries" informs the novel, as the passing reference to the "cold hillside" makes clear. The magic in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has been described as "wintry and sinister" and "a melancholy, macabre thing". There are "flocks of black birds, a forest that grows up in the canals of Venice, a countryside of bleak moors that can only be entered through mirrors, a phantom bell that makes people think of everything they have ever lost, a midnight darkness that follows an accursed man everywhere he goes". The setting reflects this tone, as "dark, fog, mist and wet give the book much of its creepy, northern atmosphere." According to Nisi Shawl in her review for The Seattle Times
, the illustrations reinforce this tenor: "Shadows fill the illustrations by Portia Rosenberg, as apt as Edward Gorey's
for Dickens' 'Bleak House
'." Author John Clute
disagrees, arguing that they are "astonishingly inappropriate" to the tone of the novel. Noting that Clarke refers to important nineteenth-century illustrators George Cruikshank
and[ Thomas Rowlandson
] , whose works are "line-dominated, intricate, scabrous, cartoon-like, savage and funny", he is disappointed with the "soft and wooden" illustrations provided by Rosenberg.
Reviewers variously describe Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell as a fantasy
novel, an alternative history, a historical fiction
, or as a combination of these styles. Clarke herself says, "I think the novel is viewed as something new ... blending together a few genres – such as fantasy and adventure and pastiche historical – plus there's the whole thing about slightly knowing footnotes commenting on the story." She explains in an interview that she was particularly influenced by the historical fiction of Rosemary Sutcliff
as well as the fantasies of Ursula K. Le Guin
and Alan Garner
, and that she loves the works of Austen.
In his review for The Boston Globe
, John Freeman observes that Clarke’s fantasy, like that of Franz Kafka
and Neil Gaiman
, is imbued with realism
. He argues that the footnotes in particular lend an air of credibility to the narrative: for example, they describe a fictional biography of Jonathan Strange and list where particular paintings in Norrell’s house are located. In an interview, Clarke describes how she creates this realist fantasy: "One way of grounding the magic is by putting in lots of stuff about street lamps, carriages and how difficult it is to get good servants." To create this effect, the novel includes many references to real early-nineteenth century people and things, such as: artists Francisco Goya
, Cruikshank, and Rowlandson; writers Frances Burney, William Beckford
, Monk Lewis, Lord Byron, and Ann Radcliffe
; Maria Edgeworth's
Belinda
and Austen's Emma
; publisher John Murray; politicians Lord Castlereagh
and George Canning
; The Gentleman's Magazine
and The Edinburgh Review
; Chippendale
and Wedgwood
furnishings; and the madness of King George III
. Clarke has said that she hopes the magic is as realistic as that in Le Guin's Earthsea
trilogy. This realism has led other reviewers, such as Polly Shulman, to argue that Clarke’s book is more of an historical fiction, akin to the works of Patrick O’Brian. As she explains, "Both Clarke's and O'Brian's stories are about a complicated relationship between two men bound together by their profession; both are set during the Napoleonic wars; and they share a dry, melancholy wit and unconventional narrative shape." Shulman sees fantasy and historical fiction as similar because both must follow rigid rules or risk a breakdown of the narrative.
As well as literary styles, Clarke pastiches many Romantic
literary genres: the comedy of manners
, the Gothic tale
, the silver-fork novel
, the military adventure, the Byronic hero
, and the historical romance of Walter Scott
. In fact, Clarke's novel maps the literary history of the early nineteenth century: the novel begins with the style and genres of Regency England, an "Austenian world of light, bright, sparkling dialogue and well-mannered gentility", and gradually transforms into a dark, Byronic tale. Clarke combines these Romantic genres with modern ones, such as the fantasy novel, drawing on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien
, Philip Pullman
, T. H. White
, and C.S. Lewis. As Maguire notes, Clarke includes rings of power and books of spells that originate in these authors' works. In contrast, Sacha Zimmerman suggests in The New Republic
that while Tolkien's world is "entirely new", Clarke's world is more engaging because it is eerily close to the reader's. Although many reviewers compare Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell to the Harry Potter
series, Annie Linskey contends in The Baltimore Sun
that "the allusion is misleading": unlike J. K. Rowling
's novels, Clarke's is morally ambiguous, with its complex plot and dark characters.
's notion of the "anxiety of influence
" in addition to romantic friendship
. The two are a "study in contrasts", with Norrell "exceptionally learned but shy and fussy" while Strange is "charming, young, fashionable and romantic". As one reviewer remarks, "Clarke could have called the book Sense and Sensibility
if the title weren't already taken."
and Susan Gubar
in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic
(1979). Developing a "divided consciousness", she is passive and quiet at home at the same time she is vengeful and murderous in the fairy land.
Clarke's book is identified as distinctively English not only because of its style but also because of its themes of "vigorous common sense", "firm ethical fiber", "serene reason and self-confidence", which are drawn from its Augustan literary
roots. The "muddy, bloody, instinctual spirit of the fairies" is equally a part of its Englishness, along with "arrogance, provincialism and class prejudice". The fairy tradition that Clarke draws on is particularly English; she alludes to tales from children's literature and others which date back to the medieval period. As Feeley notes, "The idea of fairies forming a hidden supernatural aristocracy certainly predates Spenser
and Shakespeare
, and seems to distinguish the English tales of wee folk from those of Scotland and Ireland." In these medieval English stories, the fairies are depicted as "capricious, inconsistent in their attitude toward humankind, [and] finally unknowable", characteristics which Clarke integrates into her own fairies. Clarke notes in an interview that she drew the idea of unpredictable, amoral fairies from the works of Neil Gaiman
.
In an interview with Locus
, Clarke explains why and how she integrated the theme of "Englishness" into Jonathan Strange: "I wanted to explore my ideas of the fantastic, as well as my ideas of England and my attachment to English landscape. ... Sometimes it feels to me as though we don't have a fable of England, of Britain, something strong and idealized and romantic. I was picking up on things like Chesterton
and Conan Doyle
, and the sense (which is also in Jane Austen) of what it was to be an English gentleman at the time when England was a very confident place". In particular, "it's the sort of Englishness which is stuffy but fundamentally benevolent, and fundamentally very responsible about the rest of the world", which connects Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
to Clarke's Jonathan Strange.
Clarke explores the limits of "English" magic through the characters of Stephen Black and Vinculus. As Clarke explains, "If you put a fairy next to a person who is also outside English society ... suddenly the fact that there is this alien race seems more believable, because you've got another alien and the two of them can talk about the English in this very natural way." The gentleman with the thistle-down hair sees Stephen as a noble savage
and enslaves him—like Lady Pole, Stephen is silenced. Both "suffer under a silencing spell that mimics gaps in the historical record". Furthermore, the gentleman's desire to acquire Stephen for his dancing hall is reminiscent of the English objectification of black slaves. Stephen vows to hate all white Englishmen after he discovers that they enslaved his mother, but when the gentleman shows him the hanging of the white Vinculus, he weeps. Both Strange and Norrell see the essence of Englishness in the Raven King, a character who was raised by fairies and could not speak English. As Elizabeth Hoiem explains, "The most English of all Englishmen, then, is both king and slave, in many ways indistinguishable from Stephen Black. This paradox is what ultimately resolves the plot. When Strange and Norrell summon 'the nameless slave', the Raven King's powerful alliances with nature are transferred to Stephen Black, allowing Stephen to kill the Gentleman and free himself from slavery." In the end, it is Strange and Norrell who are trapped in everlasting darkness while the silenced women, people of colour, and poor whites defeat the antagonist
.
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To promote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Bloomsbury—who also published the Harry Potter series—launched what The Observer
called "one of the biggest marketing campaigns in publishing history". Their campaign included plans for newspaper serialisations, book deliveries by horse and carriage, and the placement of "themed teasers", such as period stationery and mock newspapers, in United States coffeeshops. Seven thousand-five hundred advance readers’ copies were sent out, a limited number wrapped in paper and sealed with wax. These sold for more than US$100 each on eBay
in England in the weeks leading up to publication. By 2005, collectors were paying hundreds of pounds
for signed copies of a limited edition of the novel.
The book debuted at No. 9 on the New York Times bestseller list
, rising to No. 3 two weeks later. It remained on the list for eleven weeks. Four weeks after the book's initial publication, it was in Amazon's
top ten. Clarke went on a 20-city tour to promote the novel, after its near-simultaneous publication in 20 countries. Endorsements from independent booksellers helped the book sell out its first printing; by the end of September 2004, it had gone through eight printings.
The novel met with "a crackle of favorable reviews in major papers". The New Republic
hailed it as "an exceptional work", both "thoughtful and irrepressibly imaginative". The Houston Chronicle
described Clarke as "a superb character writer", and the Denver Post called her a "superb storyteller". The reviews praised Clarke's "deft" handling of the pastiche of styles, but many criticised the novel's pace, The Guardian
complaining that "the plot creaks frightfully in many places and the pace dawdles". In his review for Science Fiction Weekly, Clute suggested that "almost every scene in the first 300 pages should have been carefully and delicately trimmed" (emphasis in original) since they do little to advance the story. He argued that, at times, Clarke's Austenesque tone gets in the way of plot development. On the other hand, The Baltimore Sun
found the novel "a quick read". Complaining that the book leaves the reader "longing for just a bit more lyricism and poetry", The Washington Post
reviewer noted, with others, that "sex plays virtually no role in the story ... [and] one looks in vain for the corruption of the innocent". The New Statesman
reviewer, Amanda Craig
, praised the novel as "a tale of magic such as might have been written by the young Jane Austen – or, perhaps, by the young Mrs Radcliffe
, whose Gothic imagination and exuberant delicacy of style set the key." However, she also criticised the book: "As fantasy, it is deplorable, given that it fails to embrace the essentially anarchic nature of such tales. What is so wonderful about magicians, wizards and all witches other than Morgan le Fay
is not just their magical powers, but that they possess these in spite of being low-born. Far from caring about being gentlemen, wizards are the ultimate expression of rank's irrelevance to talent". However, reviewers were not in universal agreement on any of these points. Maguire wrote in the New York Times:
While promoting the novel, Neil Gaiman
said that it was "unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last 70 years", a statement which has most often been read hyperbolically
. However, as Clute explains, what Gaiman meant was that Jonathan Strange is "the finest English novel of the fantastic since Hope Mirrlees's
great Lud-in-the-Mist
(1926), which is almost certainly the finest English fantasy about the relationship between England and the fantastic yet published" (emphasis in original). Clute writes that "a more cautious claim" would be: "if Susanna Clarke finishes the story she has hardly begun in Strange ... she may well have then written the finest English novel of the fantastic about the myth of England and the myth of the fantastic and the marriage of the two ever published, bar none of the above, including Mirrlees."
announced that it had bought a three-year option on the film rights to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Clarke received an unknown "seven-figure sum", making the deal "one of the biggest acquisitions of film rights for a book in recent years". New Line chose Christopher Hampton
, whose adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons
won an Academy Award, to write it; New Line executives Mark Ordesky
and Ileen Maisel
were overseeing the production. On 7 November 2005, The Daily Telegraph reported that Hampton had finished the first draft: "As you can imagine, it took a fair amount of time to work out some way to encapsulate that enormous book in a film of sensible length ... [b]ut it was lots of fun – and very unlike anything I have ever done before." At that time, no director or cast had yet been chosen. As of June 2006, Hampton was still working on the screenplay. Julian Fellowes
then took over writing duties before the collapse of New Line Cinema.
, reader Simon Prebble
"navigates this production with much assuredness and an array of accents. ... Prebble's full voice is altered to a delicate softness for young ladies of a certain breeding, or tightened to convey the snarkiness often heard in the costive Norrell." Prebble interrupts the main text to read the footnotes, announcing them with the word footnote. According to the AudioFile review, the "narrative flow suffers" because of these interruptions and the reviewer recommends listening "with text in hand". Each note is on its own track, so listeners have the option of skipping them without missing text from the main narrative. When doing public readings, Clarke herself skips the notes.
Susanna Clarke
Susanna Mary Clarke is a British author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell , a Hugo Award-winning alternate history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time...
. An alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, it is based on the premise that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centring on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes/stereotypes. It has been described as a fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
. It overtly inverts the Industrial Revolution conception of the North/South divide in England: in this book the North is romantic and magical, rather than rational and concrete. It can be usefully compared and contrasted with Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
's attempts at synthesising a unitary English identity in her fiction.
The narrative draws on various Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
literary traditions, such as the comedy of manners
Comedy of manners
The comedy of manners is a genre of play/television/film which satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young...
, the Gothic tale
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
, and the Byronic hero
Byronic hero
The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
. The novel's language is a pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
of 19th-century writing styles, such as those of Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
and Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
. Clarke describes the supernatural with mundane details. She supplements the text with almost 200 footnotes, outlining the backstory and an entire fictional corpus of magical scholarship.
Clarke began writing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in 1993; ten years later she submitted the manuscript for publication. It was accepted by Bloomsbury and published in September 2004, with illustrations by Portia Rosenberg. Bloomsbury was so sure of its success that they printed 250,000 hardcover copies. The novel was well-received by critics and reached number three on the New York Times bestseller list
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
. It was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel
Hugo Award for Best Novel
The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
.
Volume I: Mr Norrell
The novel opens in autumn 1806 in northern EnglandNorthern England
Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North or the North Country, is a cultural region of England. It is not an official government region, but rather an informal amalgamation of counties. The southern extent of the region is roughly the River Trent, while the North is bordered...
with The Learned Society of York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
Magicians, made up of "theoretical magicians" who believe that magic died out several hundred years earlier. The group is stunned to learn of a "practising magician", Mr Gilbert Norrell, who owns a large collection of "books of magic" he has spent years purchasing to keep out of the hands of others. Norrell proves his skill as a practical magician by making the statues in York Cathedral
York Minster
York Minster is a Gothic cathedral in York, England and is one of the largest of its kind in Northern Europe alongside Cologne Cathedral. The minster is the seat of the Archbishop of York, the second-highest office of the Church of England, and is the cathedral for the Diocese of York; it is run by...
speak. John Childermass, Mr Norrell's long-time servant, convinces a member of the group, John Segundus, to write about the event for the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
newspapers.
Segundus's article generates considerable interest in Mr Norrell, who moves to London to revive practical English magic. He enters society with the help of two gentlemen about town and meets a Cabinet
Cabinet of the United Kingdom
The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the collective decision-making body of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, composed of the Prime Minister and some 22 Cabinet Ministers, the most senior of the government ministers....
minister, Sir Walter Pole. To ingratiate himself, Mr Norrell attempts to recall Sir Walter's fiancée, Emma Wintertowne, from the dead. He summons a fairy—"the gentleman with thistle-down hair"—who strikes a bargain with Mr Norrell to restore Emma: half of her life will be spent with the fairy. After news spreads of Emma's resurrection and happy marriage to Sir Walter, magic becomes respectable and Mr Norrell performs various feats to aid the government in their ongoing war
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
against Napoleon.
While living in London, Mr Norrell encounters Vinculus, a street-magician, who relates a prophecy about a nameless slave and two magicians in England, but Norrell dismisses it. While travelling, Vinculus later meets Jonathan Strange, a young gentleman of property from Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
, and recites the same prophecy, prompting Strange to become a magician. Meanwhile, the gentleman with thistle-down hair takes a liking to Stephen Black, Sir Walter's capable black butler, and promises to make him a king. Emma (now Lady Pole) lapses into lassitude. She rarely speaks, and her attempts to communicate her situation are confounded by magic. No doctor can cure her, and Mr Norrell claims that her problems cannot be solved by magic. Without the knowledge of the other characters, each evening she and Stephen are forced to attend balls held by the gentleman with thistle-down hair in the Faerie kingdom of Lost-Hope, where they dance all night long.
Volume II: Jonathan Strange
Volume II opens in Summer 1809 with Strange learning of Mr Norrell and travelling to London to meet him. They immediately clash over the importance of John Uskglass (the legendary Raven King) to English magic. Strange argues that "without the Raven King there would be no magic and no magicians" while Norrell retorts that the Raven King made war upon England and should be forgotten. Despite their differing opinions and temperaments, Strange becomes Norrell's pupil. Norrell, however, deliberately keeps some knowledge from Strange.Lady Pole and Strange's wife, Arabella, become friends; several times Lady Pole attempts to tell Arabella about her forced nights of dancing at the fairy's castle in Lost-Hope, but each time she tells an unrelated story. Arabella also meets the gentleman with thistle-down hair at the Poles', but she assumes he is simply a resident. Without her husband's knowledge, the fairy plots to enchant her, although Stephen Black continually attempts to dissuade him.
The Stranges become a popular couple in London. The Cabinet ministers find Strange easier to deal with than Norrell, and they send him to assist the Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
on his Peninsular Campaign
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
. For over a year, Strange helps the army: he creates roads, moves towns, and makes dead men speak. After he returns, he fails to cure George III's
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
madness, although Strange manages to save the king from becoming enchanted by the gentleman with thistle-down hair, who is determined to make Stephen a king. Strange then helps defeat Napoleon at the horrific Battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
.
Frustrated with being Norrell's pupil, Strange pens a scathing review of a book outlining Norrell's theories on modern magic; in particular, Strange challenges Norrell's views of the Raven King. The English public splits into "Norrellites" and "Strangites"; Norrell and Strange part company, although not without regret. Strange returns home and works on his own book, The History and Practice of English Magic. Arabella goes missing, then suddenly reappears, sick and weak. Three days later she dies.
Volume III: John Uskglass
Volume III opens in January 1816 with Childermass experiencing strong magic that is not produced by either Norrell or Strange. At the same time, Lady Pole attempts to shoot Mr Norrell as he is returning home. Childermass takes the bullet himself but is not killed. Afterwards, Lady Pole is cared for in the country by John Segundus, who has an inkling of the magic surrounding her. During travels in the north, Stephen meets Vinculus, who recites his prophecy: "the nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country ... " Stephen believes it applies to him, but the gentleman with thistle-down hair argues that it applies to the Raven King.Strange settles in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
and meets Flora Greysteel. They become fond of each other and Strange's friends believe he may marry again. However, after experimenting with dangerous magic that threatens his sanity in order to gain access to Faerie, he discovers that Arabella is alive and being held captive. Immediately after he discovers this, the gentleman with the thistledown hair curses him with Eternal Night, an eerie darkness that engulfs him and follows him wherever he goes. Thereafter, Strange's strenuous efforts to rescue her take their toll, and his letters to friends begin to appear crazed. On Strange's orders, Flora moves with her family to Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
and secludes herself inside her home, along with a mirror given to her by Strange. In England, the return of John Uskglass sparks a magical renaissance, but Norrell fails to grasp its significance. Strange returns and gives Childermass instructions which allow him to free Lady Pole from the fairy's enchantment. Strange, bringing "Eternal Night" with him, asks Norrell to help him undo Arabella's enchantment by summoning John Uskglass. Although they initially believe that they have succeeded, they later come to believe that their contact with John Uskglass was accidental. As a result of the imprecision of the fairy's curse, which was placed on "the English magician," Norrell is trapped along with Strange in the "Eternal Night," and they cannot move more than a certain distance from each other. They do succeed in sending Arabella to the mirror in Padua, where Flora is waiting for her. After the spells of the gentleman with thistle-down hair are broken, Stephen destroys him, and becomes the new king of Lost-Hope. Later Strange has a conversation with Arabella, making it unclear if he and Norrell are working to undo the eternal darkness they are both trapped in, and a vague hope that one day he will return to her. The final scene
depicts the coming of age of English magic, in which a bar is filled with arguing Norrellites and Strangites.
Composition and publication
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
's The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
and afterwards was inspired to "trying writing a novel of magic and fantasy".
After she returned from Spain in 1993, Clarke began to think seriously about writing her novel. She signed up for a five-day fantasy and science-fiction writing workshop, co-taught by writers Colin Greenland
Colin Greenland
Colin Greenland is a British science fiction writer, whose first story won the second prize in a 1982 Faber & Faber competition. His best known novel is Take Back Plenty , winner of both major British science fiction awards, the 1990 British SF Association award and the 1991 Arthur C...
and Geoff Ryman
Geoff Ryman
Geoffrey Charles Ryman is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and surrealistic or "slipstream" fiction.Ryman currently lectures in Creative Writing for University of Manchester's English Department. His most recent full-length novel, The King's Last Song, is set in Cambodia, both at the time of...
. The students were expected to prepare a short story before attending, but Clarke only had "bundles" of material for her novel. From this she extracted "The Ladies of Grace Adieu
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, published in October 2006, is a collection of eight short stories by Susanna Clarke and illustrated by Charles Vess...
", a story about three women secretly practising magic who are discovered by the famous Jonathan Strange. Greenland was so impressed with the story that, without Clarke's knowledge, he sent an excerpt to his friend, the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
. Gaiman later said, "It was terrifying from my point of view to read this first short story that had so much assurance ... It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata." Gaiman showed the story to his friend, science-fiction writer and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Patrick James Nielsen Hayden , is an American science fiction editor, fan, fanzine publisher, essayist, reviewer, anthologist, teacher and blogger. He is a World Fantasy Award and Hugo Award winner , and is an editor and the Manager of Science Fiction at Tor Books...
. Clarke learned of these events when Hayden called and offered to publish her story in his anthology Starlight 1
Starlight (anthology series)
Starlight is a science fiction and fantasy series edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden and published by Tor Books.-Volumes:* Starlight 1 * Starlight 2 * Starlight 3 -Awards:...
, which featured pieces by well-regarded science-fiction and fantasy writers. She accepted, and the book won the World Fantasy Award
World Fantasy Award
The World Fantasy Awards are annual, international awards given to authors and artists who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the field of fantasy...
for best anthology in 1997.
Clarke spent the next ten years working on the novel in her spare time, while editing cookbooks full-time for Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
. She also published stories in Starlight 2 and Starlight 3; according to the New York Times Magazine, her work was known and appreciated by a small group of fantasy fans and critics on the internet. She was never sure, however, if she would finish her novel or if it would be published. Clarke tried to write for three hours each day, beginning at 5:30 am, but struggled to keep this schedule. Rather than writing the novel from beginning to end, she wrote in fragments and attempted to stitch them together. Clarke, admitting that the project was for herself and not the reader, "clung to this method" "because I felt that if I went back and started at the beginning, [the novel] would lack depth, and I would just be skimming the surface of what I could do. But if I had known it was going to take me ten years, I would never have begun. I was buoyed up by thinking that I would finish it next year, or the year after next." Clarke and Greenland fell in love while she was writing the novel and moved in together. Greenland did not read the novel until it was published.
Around 2001, Clarke "had begun to despair", and started looking for someone to help her finish and sell the book. Giles Gordon became her agent and sold the unfinished manuscript to Bloomsbury in early 2003, after two publishers rejected it as unmarketable. Bloomsbury were so sure the novel would be a success that they offered Clarke a £1 million advance. They printed 250,000 hardcover copies simultaneously in the United States, Britain, and Germany. Seventeen translations were begun before the first English publication was released. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was first published in the United States on 8 September 2004, in the United Kingdom on 30 September, and in other countries on 4 October.
Style
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
, particularly of nineteenth-century British writers such as Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
, and George Meredith
George Meredith
George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...
. Specifically, the novel's minor characters, including sycophant
Sycophant
Sycophancy means:# Obsequious flattery; servility.# The character or characteristic of a sycophant.Alternative phrases are often used such as:-Etymology:...
s, rakes
Rake (character)
A rake, short for rakehell, is a historic term applied to a man who is habituated to immoral conduct, frequently a heartless womanizer. Often a rake was a man who wasted his fortune on gambling, wine, women and song, incurring lavish debts in the process...
, and the Duke of Wellington, evoke Dickens' caricatures. Laura Miller, in her review for Salon
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
, suggests that the novel is "about a certain literary voice
Writer's voice
Writer's voice is the literary term used to describe the individual writing style of an author. Voice was generally considered to be a combination of a writer's use of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development, dialogue, etc., within a given body of text . Voice can be thought of in terms...
, the eminently civilized voice of early 19th century social comedy", exemplified by the works of Austen. The novel even uses obsolete spellings—chuse for choose and shewed for showed, for example—to convey this voice as well as the free indirect speech
Free indirect speech
Free indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech...
made famous by Austen. Clarke herself notes that Austen's influence is particularly strong in the "domestic scenes, set in living rooms and drawing rooms where people mostly chat about magic" where Dickens's is prominent "any time there's more action or description". While many reviewers compare Clarke’s style to that of Austen, Gregory Feeley argues in his review for The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...
that "the points of resemblance are mostly superficial". He writes that "Austen gets down to business briskly, while Clarke engages in a curious narrative strategy of continual deferral and delay." For example, Clarke mentions Jonathan Strange on the first page of the novel, but only in a footnote. He reappears in other footnotes throughout the opening but does not appear as a character in the text proper until a quarter of the way through the novel.
In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Clarke infuses her dry wit with prosaic quaintness. For example, the narrator notes: "It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week." As Michel Faber
Michel Faber
Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of fiction. He writes in English.Faber was born in The Hague, Netherlands. He and his parents emigrated to Australia in 1967...
explains in his review for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, "here we have all the defining features of Clarke's style simultaneously: the archly Austenesque tone, the somewhat overdone quaintness ("upon the Tuesday"), the winningly matter-of-fact use of the supernatural, and drollness to spare." Gregory Maguire
Gregory Maguire
Gregory Maguire is an American writer. He is the author of the novels Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and many other novels for adults and children...
notes in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that Clarke even gently ridicules the genre of the novel itself: "[A gentleman] picks up a book and begins to read ... but he is not attending to what he reads and he has got to Page 22 before he discovers it is a novel – the sort of work which above all others he most despises – and he puts it down in disgust." Elsewhere, the narrator remarks, "Dear Emma does not waste her energies upon novels like other young women." The narrator's identity has been a topic of discussion, with Clarke declaring that said narrator is female and omniscient rather than a future scholar from within the real storyline as some had suggested.
Clarke's style extends to the novel's 185 footnotes, which document a meticulous invented history of English magic. At times, the footnotes dominate entire pages of the novel. Michael Dirda, in his review for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, describes these notes as "dazzling feats of imaginative scholarship", in which the anonymous narrator "provides elaborate mini-essays, relating anecdotes from the lives of semi-legendary magicians, describing strange books and their contents, speculating upon the early years and later fate of the Raven King". This extensive extra-textual apparatus is reminiscent of postmodernist works, such as David Foster Wallace's
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
Infinite Jest
Infinite Jest
Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace. The lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-parodic future version of North America, and touches on tennis, substance addiction and recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising and popular entertainment,...
(1996) and Thomas Pynchon's
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
Mason & Dixon
Mason & Dixon
Mason & Dixon is a postmodernist novel by American author Thomas Pynchon published in 1997. It centers on the collaboration of the historical Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in their astronomical and surveying exploits in Cape Colony, Saint Helena, Great Britain and along the Mason-Dixon line in...
(1997), particularly as Clarke's notes humorously refer to previous notes in the novel. Clarke did not expect her publisher to accept the footnotes.
Feeley explains that Romantic poet
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
John Keats’s
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
"vision of enchantment and devastation following upon any dealings with faeries" informs the novel, as the passing reference to the "cold hillside" makes clear. The magic in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has been described as "wintry and sinister" and "a melancholy, macabre thing". There are "flocks of black birds, a forest that grows up in the canals of Venice, a countryside of bleak moors that can only be entered through mirrors, a phantom bell that makes people think of everything they have ever lost, a midnight darkness that follows an accursed man everywhere he goes". The setting reflects this tone, as "dark, fog, mist and wet give the book much of its creepy, northern atmosphere." According to Nisi Shawl in her review for The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times is a newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, US. It is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington. It has been, since the demise in 2009 of the printed version of the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's only major daily print newspaper.-History:The Seattle Times...
, the illustrations reinforce this tenor: "Shadows fill the illustrations by Portia Rosenberg, as apt as Edward Gorey's
Edward Gorey
Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre illustrated books.-Early life:...
for Dickens' 'Bleak House
Bleak House
Bleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon...
'." Author John Clute
John Clute
John Frederick Clute is a Canadian born author and critic who has lived in Britain since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history."...
disagrees, arguing that they are "astonishingly inappropriate" to the tone of the novel. Noting that Clarke refers to important nineteenth-century illustrators George Cruikshank
George Cruikshank
George Cruikshank was a British caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his life. His book illustrations for his friend Charles Dickens, and many other authors, reached an international audience.-Early life:Cruikshank was born in London...
and
Thomas Rowlandson
Thomas Rowlandson was an English artist and caricaturist.- Biography :Rowlandson was born in Old Jewry, in the City of London. He was the son of a tradesman or city merchant. On leaving school he became a student at the Royal Academy...
Genre
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
novel, an alternative history, a historical fiction
Historical fiction
Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...
, or as a combination of these styles. Clarke herself says, "I think the novel is viewed as something new ... blending together a few genres – such as fantasy and adventure and pastiche historical – plus there's the whole thing about slightly knowing footnotes commenting on the story." She explains in an interview that she was particularly influenced by the historical fiction of Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary Sutcliff CBE was a British novelist, and writer for children, best known as a writer of historical fiction and children's literature. Although she was primarily a children's author, the quality and depth of her writing also appeals to adults; Sutcliff herself once commented that she wrote...
as well as the fantasies of Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...
and Alan Garner
Alan Garner
With his first book published, Garner abandoned his work as a labourer and gained a job as a freelance television reporter, living a "hand to mouth" lifestyle on a "shoestring" budget...
, and that she loves the works of Austen.
In his review for The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
, John Freeman observes that Clarke’s fantasy, like that of Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
and Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
, is imbued with realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
. He argues that the footnotes in particular lend an air of credibility to the narrative: for example, they describe a fictional biography of Jonathan Strange and list where particular paintings in Norrell’s house are located. In an interview, Clarke describes how she creates this realist fantasy: "One way of grounding the magic is by putting in lots of stuff about street lamps, carriages and how difficult it is to get good servants." To create this effect, the novel includes many references to real early-nineteenth century people and things, such as: artists Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, Cruikshank, and Rowlandson; writers Frances Burney, William Beckford
William Thomas Beckford
William Thomas Beckford , usually known as William Beckford, was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed to be the richest commoner in England...
, Monk Lewis, Lord Byron, and Ann Radcliffe
Ann Radcliffe
Anne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...
; Maria Edgeworth's
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe...
Belinda
Belinda (Edgeworth novel)
Belinda is an 1801 novel by the Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. It was first published in three volumes by Joseph Johnson of London in 1801, and was later reprinted by Pandora Press in 1986...
and Austen's Emma
Emma
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively 'comedy of manners' among...
; publisher John Murray; politicians Lord Castlereagh
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh
Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCH, PC, PC , usually known as Lord CastlereaghThe name Castlereagh derives from the baronies of Castlereagh and Ards, in which the manors of Newtownards and Comber were located...
and George Canning
George Canning
George Canning PC, FRS was a British statesman and politician who served as Foreign Secretary and briefly Prime Minister.-Early life: 1770–1793:...
; The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
and The Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
; Chippendale
Thomas Chippendale
Thomas Chippendale was a London cabinet-maker and furniture designer in the mid-Georgian, English Rococo, and Neoclassical styles. In 1754 he published a book of his designs, titled The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director...
and Wedgwood
Wedgwood
Wedgwood, strictly speaking Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, is a pottery firm owned by KPS Capital Partners, a private equity company based in New York City, USA. Wedgwood was founded on May 1, 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood and in 1987 merged with Waterford Crystal to create Waterford Wedgwood, an...
furnishings; and the madness of King George III
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
. Clarke has said that she hopes the magic is as realistic as that in Le Guin's Earthsea
Earthsea
Earthsea is a fictional realm originally created by Ursula K. Le Guin for her short story "The Word of Unbinding", published in 1964. Earthsea became the setting for a further six books, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea, first published in 1968, and continuing with The Tombs of Atuan, The...
trilogy. This realism has led other reviewers, such as Polly Shulman, to argue that Clarke’s book is more of an historical fiction, akin to the works of Patrick O’Brian. As she explains, "Both Clarke's and O'Brian's stories are about a complicated relationship between two men bound together by their profession; both are set during the Napoleonic wars; and they share a dry, melancholy wit and unconventional narrative shape." Shulman sees fantasy and historical fiction as similar because both must follow rigid rules or risk a breakdown of the narrative.
As well as literary styles, Clarke pastiches many Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
literary genres: the comedy of manners
Comedy of manners
The comedy of manners is a genre of play/television/film which satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young...
, the Gothic tale
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
, the silver-fork novel
Fashionable novel
Fashionable novels, also called silver fork novels, were a 19th-century genre of English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class. They dominated the English literature market from the mid-1820s to the mid-1840s. They were often indiscreet, and on occasion "keys" would circulate that...
, the military adventure, the Byronic hero
Byronic hero
The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
, and the historical romance of Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
. In fact, Clarke's novel maps the literary history of the early nineteenth century: the novel begins with the style and genres of Regency England, an "Austenian world of light, bright, sparkling dialogue and well-mannered gentility", and gradually transforms into a dark, Byronic tale. Clarke combines these Romantic genres with modern ones, such as the fantasy novel, drawing on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman CBE, FRSL is an English writer from Norwich. He is the best-selling author of several books, most notably his trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials, and his fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ...
, T. H. White
T. H. White
Terence Hanbury White was an English author best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King, first published together in 1958.-Biography:...
, and C.S. Lewis. As Maguire notes, Clarke includes rings of power and books of spells that originate in these authors' works. In contrast, Sacha Zimmerman suggests in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
that while Tolkien's world is "entirely new", Clarke's world is more engaging because it is eerily close to the reader's. Although many reviewers compare Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell to the Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
series, Annie Linskey contends in The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun is the U.S. state of Maryland’s largest general circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries....
that "the allusion is misleading": unlike J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling
Joanne "Jo" Rowling, OBE , better known as J. K. Rowling, is the British author of the Harry Potter fantasy series...
's novels, Clarke's is morally ambiguous, with its complex plot and dark characters.
Friendship
Reviewers focus most frequently on the dynamic between Norrell and Strange, arguing that the novel is about their relationship. In her review for the Times Literary Supplement, Roz Kaveney writes that the two illustrate Harold BloomHarold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
's notion of the "anxiety of influence
The Anxiety of Influence
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry is a book by Harold Bloom, published in 1973. It was the first in a series of books that advanced a new "revisionary" or antithetical approach to literary criticism....
" in addition to romantic friendship
Romantic friendship
The term romantic friendship refers to both very close but non-sexual relationship and at times physical relationship between friends, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in modern Western societies, and may include for example holding hands, cuddling,...
. The two are a "study in contrasts", with Norrell "exceptionally learned but shy and fussy" while Strange is "charming, young, fashionable and romantic". As one reviewer remarks, "Clarke could have called the book Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, is a British romance novel by Jane Austen, her first published work under the pseudonym, "A Lady." Jane Austen is considered a pioneer of the romance genre of novels, and for the realism portrayed in her novels, is one the most widely read writers in...
if the title weren't already taken."
Reason and madness
The novel is not about the fight between good and evil but rather the differences between madness and reason—and it is the fairy world that is connected to madness (mad people can see fairies, for example). Lady Pole, who is taken away into the fairyland of Lost-Hope every night, appears insane to those around her. She is hidden away, like the character type examined by Sandra GilbertSandra Gilbert
Sandra M. Gilbert , Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis, is an influential literary critic and poet who has published widely in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism...
and Susan Gubar
Susan Gubar
Dr. Susan D. Gubar is an American academic and Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Indiana University. She is co-author with Dr. Sandra M. Gilbert of the standard feminist text, The Madwoman in the Attic and a trilogy on women's writing in the twentieth century.Her book...
in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic
The Madwoman in the Attic
The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, published in 1979, examines Victorian literature from a feminist perspective...
(1979). Developing a "divided consciousness", she is passive and quiet at home at the same time she is vengeful and murderous in the fairy land.
Englishness
Augustan literature
Augustan literature is a style of English literature produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II on the 1740s with the deaths of Pope and Swift...
roots. The "muddy, bloody, instinctual spirit of the fairies" is equally a part of its Englishness, along with "arrogance, provincialism and class prejudice". The fairy tradition that Clarke draws on is particularly English; she alludes to tales from children's literature and others which date back to the medieval period. As Feeley notes, "The idea of fairies forming a hidden supernatural aristocracy certainly predates Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
and Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, and seems to distinguish the English tales of wee folk from those of Scotland and Ireland." In these medieval English stories, the fairies are depicted as "capricious, inconsistent in their attitude toward humankind, [and] finally unknowable", characteristics which Clarke integrates into her own fairies. Clarke notes in an interview that she drew the idea of unpredictable, amoral fairies from the works of Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
.
In an interview with Locus
Locus (magazine)
Locus, subtitled "The Magazine Of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field", is published monthly in Oakland, California. It reports on the science fiction and fantasy publishing field, including comprehensive listings of all new books published in the genre. It is considered the news organ and trade...
, Clarke explains why and how she integrated the theme of "Englishness" into Jonathan Strange: "I wanted to explore my ideas of the fantastic, as well as my ideas of England and my attachment to English landscape. ... Sometimes it feels to me as though we don't have a fable of England, of Britain, something strong and idealized and romantic. I was picking up on things like Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
and Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
, and the sense (which is also in Jane Austen) of what it was to be an English gentleman at the time when England was a very confident place". In particular, "it's the sort of Englishness which is stuffy but fundamentally benevolent, and fundamentally very responsible about the rest of the world", which connects Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
to Clarke's Jonathan Strange.
Historical otherness
Using techniques of the genre of alternative history, Clarke creates events and characters that would have been impossible in the early nineteenth century. She also explores the "silencing" of underrepresented groups: women, people of colour, and poor whites. Both Strange and Norrell suppress the voices of these groups in their rise to power. Mr Norrell, for example, attempts to buy up all the books of magic in England in order to keep anyone else from acquiring their knowledge. He also barters away half of Emma Wintertowne's (Lady Pole's) life for political influence, a deal about which, due to an enchantment, she cannot speak coherently.Clarke explores the limits of "English" magic through the characters of Stephen Black and Vinculus. As Clarke explains, "If you put a fairy next to a person who is also outside English society ... suddenly the fact that there is this alien race seems more believable, because you've got another alien and the two of them can talk about the English in this very natural way." The gentleman with the thistle-down hair sees Stephen as a noble savage
Noble savage
The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...
and enslaves him—like Lady Pole, Stephen is silenced. Both "suffer under a silencing spell that mimics gaps in the historical record". Furthermore, the gentleman's desire to acquire Stephen for his dancing hall is reminiscent of the English objectification of black slaves. Stephen vows to hate all white Englishmen after he discovers that they enslaved his mother, but when the gentleman shows him the hanging of the white Vinculus, he weeps. Both Strange and Norrell see the essence of Englishness in the Raven King, a character who was raised by fairies and could not speak English. As Elizabeth Hoiem explains, "The most English of all Englishmen, then, is both king and slave, in many ways indistinguishable from Stephen Black. This paradox is what ultimately resolves the plot. When Strange and Norrell summon 'the nameless slave', the Raven King's powerful alliances with nature are transferred to Stephen Black, allowing Stephen to kill the Gentleman and free himself from slavery." In the end, it is Strange and Norrell who are trapped in everlasting darkness while the silenced women, people of colour, and poor whites defeat the antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
.
Reception
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
called "one of the biggest marketing campaigns in publishing history". Their campaign included plans for newspaper serialisations, book deliveries by horse and carriage, and the placement of "themed teasers", such as period stationery and mock newspapers, in United States coffeeshops. Seven thousand-five hundred advance readers’ copies were sent out, a limited number wrapped in paper and sealed with wax. These sold for more than US$100 each on eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
in England in the weeks leading up to publication. By 2005, collectors were paying hundreds of pounds
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
for signed copies of a limited edition of the novel.
The book debuted at No. 9 on the New York Times bestseller list
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
, rising to No. 3 two weeks later. It remained on the list for eleven weeks. Four weeks after the book's initial publication, it was in Amazon's
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
top ten. Clarke went on a 20-city tour to promote the novel, after its near-simultaneous publication in 20 countries. Endorsements from independent booksellers helped the book sell out its first printing; by the end of September 2004, it had gone through eight printings.
The novel met with "a crackle of favorable reviews in major papers". The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
hailed it as "an exceptional work", both "thoughtful and irrepressibly imaginative". The Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
described Clarke as "a superb character writer", and the Denver Post called her a "superb storyteller". The reviews praised Clarke's "deft" handling of the pastiche of styles, but many criticised the novel's pace, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
complaining that "the plot creaks frightfully in many places and the pace dawdles". In his review for Science Fiction Weekly, Clute suggested that "almost every scene in the first 300 pages should have been carefully and delicately trimmed" (emphasis in original) since they do little to advance the story. He argued that, at times, Clarke's Austenesque tone gets in the way of plot development. On the other hand, The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun is the U.S. state of Maryland’s largest general circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries....
found the novel "a quick read". Complaining that the book leaves the reader "longing for just a bit more lyricism and poetry", The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
reviewer noted, with others, that "sex plays virtually no role in the story ... [and] one looks in vain for the corruption of the innocent". The New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
reviewer, Amanda Craig
Amanda Craig
Amanda Craig is a British novelist. Craig studied at Bedales School and Cambridge and works as a journalist. She is married with two children and lives in London....
, praised the novel as "a tale of magic such as might have been written by the young Jane Austen – or, perhaps, by the young Mrs Radcliffe
Ann Radcliffe
Anne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...
, whose Gothic imagination and exuberant delicacy of style set the key." However, she also criticised the book: "As fantasy, it is deplorable, given that it fails to embrace the essentially anarchic nature of such tales. What is so wonderful about magicians, wizards and all witches other than Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay , alternatively known as Morgane, Morgaine, Morgana and other variants, is a powerful sorceress in the Arthurian legend. Early works featuring Morgan do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a fay or magician...
is not just their magical powers, but that they possess these in spite of being low-born. Far from caring about being gentlemen, wizards are the ultimate expression of rank's irrelevance to talent". However, reviewers were not in universal agreement on any of these points. Maguire wrote in the New York Times:
What keeps this densely realized confection aloft is that very quality of reverence to the writers of the past. The chief character in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell isn't, in fact, either of the magicians: it's the library that they both adore, the books they consult and write and, in a sense, become. Clarke's giddiness comes from finding a way at once to enter the company of her literary heroes, to pay them homage and to add to the literature.
While promoting the novel, Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
said that it was "unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last 70 years", a statement which has most often been read hyperbolically
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally....
. However, as Clute explains, what Gaiman meant was that Jonathan Strange is "the finest English novel of the fantastic since Hope Mirrlees's
Hope Mirrlees
Hope Mirrlees was a British translator, poet and novelist. She is best known for the 1926 Lud-in-the-Mist, a fantasy novel and influential classic, and for Paris: A Poem, a modernist poem which critic Julia Briggs deemed "modernism's lost masterpiece, a work of extraordinary energy and intensity,...
great Lud-in-the-Mist
Lud-in-the-Mist
Lud-in-the-Mist is the third of three novels by Hope Mirrlees, and the only one still in print . It continues the author's exploration of the themes of Life and Art, by a method already described in the preface of her first novel, Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists : "to turn from time to time...
(1926), which is almost certainly the finest English fantasy about the relationship between England and the fantastic yet published" (emphasis in original). Clute writes that "a more cautious claim" would be: "if Susanna Clarke finishes the story she has hardly begun in Strange ... she may well have then written the finest English novel of the fantastic about the myth of England and the myth of the fantastic and the marriage of the two ever published, bar none of the above, including Mirrlees."
Awards and nominations
| Award | Year | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Man Booker Prize | 2004 | Longlisted |
| Whitbread First Novel Award | 2004 | Shortlisted |
| Guardian First Book Award Guardian First Book Award Guardian First Book Award, issued before 1999 as Guardian Fiction Prize or Guardian Fiction Award, is awarded to new writing in fiction and non-fiction.-History:... |
2004 | Shortlisted |
| Times Best Novel of the Year | 2004 | Won |
| British Book Awards British Book Awards The Galaxy National Book Awards are a series of British literary awards focused on the best UK writers and their works, as selected by an academy of members from the British book publishing industry... Literary Fiction Award |
2005 | Shortlisted |
| Hugo Award for Best Novel Hugo Award for Best Novel The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially... |
2005 | Won |
| World Fantasy Award for Best Novel World Fantasy Award for Best Novel This World Fantasy Award is given to the fantasy novel or novels voted best by a panel of judges, and presented each year at the World Fantasy Convention.-1975:... |
2005 | Won |
| Locus Award for Best First Novel Locus Award for Best First Novel Winners of the Locus Award for Best First Novel, awarded by the Locus magazine. Awards presented in a given year are for works published in the previous calendar year.... |
2005 | Won |
| Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature | 2005 | Won |
| British Book Awards British Book Awards The Galaxy National Book Awards are a series of British literary awards focused on the best UK writers and their works, as selected by an academy of members from the British book publishing industry... Newcomer of the Year Award |
2005 | Won |
Film
On 15 October 2004, New Line CinemaNew Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
announced that it had bought a three-year option on the film rights to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Clarke received an unknown "seven-figure sum", making the deal "one of the biggest acquisitions of film rights for a book in recent years". New Line chose Christopher Hampton
Christopher Hampton
Christopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of...
, whose adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons
Dangerous Liaisons
Dangerous Liaisons is a 1988 drama film based upon Christopher Hampton's play, Les liaisons dangereuses, which in turn was a theatrical adaptation of the 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos....
won an Academy Award, to write it; New Line executives Mark Ordesky
Mark Ordesky
Mark Lowell Ordesky is an American film producer and film studio executive. He is best known for executive producing the Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy.- Personal life :...
and Ileen Maisel
Ileen Maisel
Ileen Maisel is an American-born film producer, living in the United Kingdom. In 2009, she was one of the founders of Amber Entertainment. Previously she was Senior Vice President of European Production for New Line Cinema...
were overseeing the production. On 7 November 2005, The Daily Telegraph reported that Hampton had finished the first draft: "As you can imagine, it took a fair amount of time to work out some way to encapsulate that enormous book in a film of sensible length ... [b]ut it was lots of fun – and very unlike anything I have ever done before." At that time, no director or cast had yet been chosen. As of June 2006, Hampton was still working on the screenplay. Julian Fellowes
Julian Fellowes
Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, DL , known as Julian Fellowes, is an English actor, novelist, film director and screenwriter, as well as a Conservative peer.-Early life:...
then took over writing duties before the collapse of New Line Cinema.
Audio book
The 32-hour audio book of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was released by Audio Renaissance in 2004. According to a review in The Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
, reader Simon Prebble
Simon Prebble
Simon Prebble is an English actor and narrator.-Early life:Born and raised in Croydon, England, Simon Micawber Prebble is the son of the novelist, screenwriter and historian John Prebble and fashion artist Betty Prebble...
"navigates this production with much assuredness and an array of accents. ... Prebble's full voice is altered to a delicate softness for young ladies of a certain breeding, or tightened to convey the snarkiness often heard in the costive Norrell." Prebble interrupts the main text to read the footnotes, announcing them with the word footnote. According to the AudioFile review, the "narrative flow suffers" because of these interruptions and the reviewer recommends listening "with text in hand". Each note is on its own track, so listeners have the option of skipping them without missing text from the main narrative. When doing public readings, Clarke herself skips the notes.
Sequel
Clarke is currently working on a book that begins a few years after Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell ends. It will centre on characters such as Childermass and Vinculus who, as Clarke says, are "a bit lower down the social scale".External links
- Official website
- The Library at Hurtfew, a Jonathan Strange wiki