Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

About Jonathan Strange

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004) is a standalone epic fantasy of approximately 1000 pages, structured as a Victorian novel. Set in an alternate Napoleonic England where magic once existed and has been absent for centuries, it follows Mr Norrell — a reclusive scholar who has collected every book of magic in England and refuses to share them — and Jonathan Strange, a gentleman who discovers a natural gift for practical magic. Their collaboration to restore English magic during the Napoleonic Wars attracts the attention of a powerful and sinister fairy. Clarke spent ten years writing the novel, and its detailed fictional history is so complete that it won the Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards.