Book Club Guide

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke · 2004 · Fantasy

Key themes

Magic as a lost tradition — and the politics of who controls it
The English past as a place of genuine strangeness
Two incompatible magicians and what their conflict means

About this book

Two magicians revive English magic during the Napoleonic wars; witty, footnoted and utterly original.

Published in 2004, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell won the World Fantasy Award and the Hugo-eligible Clarke Award. Clarke reportedly worked on it for ten years. It sold over 4 million copies.

Discussion questions

Norrell wants to make magic respectable and controlled; Strange wants to recover its wild power. What is Clarke saying through this opposition about the relationship between institutions and imagination?
The footnotes are one of the novel's most distinctive features — they contain history, gossip, and stories that parallel the main text. What do they add — and how do they change the experience of reading?
The Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair is one of fiction's great fairy villains. How does Clarke make him genuinely frightening while maintaining the novel's comic-register tone?
The novel is deeply embedded in the tradition of 19th-century English fiction. How does Clarke use this intertextuality — and what does a fantasy novel gain from this mimicry?
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is very long (800+ pages). Does the length feel necessary — and what does the novel need that a shorter book would lose?