Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

JONATHAN
STRANGE

Mr NORRELL

JONATHAN
STRANGE

Mr NORRELL

Susanna Clarke

Illustrations by Portia Rosenberg

BLOOMSBURY

First published in Great Britain 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Susanna Clarke

This electronic edition published 2009 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The right of Susanna Clarke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 978-1-4088-0374-5

Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Portia Rosenberg

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In memory of my brother,
Paul Frederick Gunn Clarke, 1961–2000

CONTENTS

Volume I
:
Mr Norrell

1 The library at Hurtfew

2 The Old Starre Inn

3 The stones of York

4 The Friends of English Magic

5 Drawlight

6 "Magic is not respectable, sir."

7 An opportunity unlikely to occur again

8 A gentleman with thistle-down hair

9 Lady Pole

10 The difficulty of finding employment for a magician

11 Brest

12 The Spirit of English Magic urges Mr Norrell to the Aid of Britannia

13 The magician of Thread needle-street

14 Heart-break Farm

15 "How is Lady Pole?"

16 Lost-hope

17 The unaccountable appearance of twenty-five guineas

18 Sir Walter consults gentlemen in several professions

19 The Peep-O' Day-Boys

20 The unlikely milliner

21 The cards of Marseilles

22 The Knight of Wands

Volume II:
Jonathan Strange

23 The Shadow House

24 Another magician

25 The education of a magician

26 Orb, crown and sceptre

27 The magician's wife

28 The Duke of Roxburghe's library

29 At the house of José Estoril

30 The book of Robert Findhelm

31 Seventeen dead Neapolitans

32 The King

33
Place the moon at my eyes

34 On the edge of the desert

35 The Nottinghamshire gentleman

36 All the mirrors of the world

37 The Cinque Dragownes

38 From
The Edinburgh Review

39 The two magicians

40 "Depend upon it; there is no such place."

41 Starecross

42 Strange decides to write a book

43 The curious adventure of Mr Hyde

44 Arabella

Volume III:
John Uskglass

45 Prologue to
The History and Practice of English Magic

46 The sky spoke to me . .
.

47 "A black lad and a blue fella – that ought to mean summat."

48 The Engravings

49 Wildness and madness

50
The History and Practice of English Magic

51 A family by the name of Greysteel

52 The old lady of Cannaregio

53 A little dead grey mouse

54 A little box, the colour of heartache

55
The second shall see his dearest possession in his enemy's hand

56 The Black Tower

57 The Black Letters

58 Henry Woodhope pays a visit

59 Leucrocuta, the Wolf of the Evening

60 Tempest and lies

61 Tree speaks to Stone; Stone speaks to Water

62
I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood

63
The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache

64 Two versions of Lady Pole

65 The ashes, the pearls, the counterpane and the kiss

66 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

67 The hawthorn tree

68 "Yes."

69 Strangites and Norrellites

VOLUME I

Mr NORRELL

He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he
did it was like a history lesson and no one
could bear to listen to him.

1
The library at Hurtfew

Autumn 1806 — January 1807

S
OME YEARS AGO there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic — nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one's head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.

A great magician has said of his profession that its practitioners ". . . must pound and rack their brains to make the least learning go in, but quarrelling always comes very naturally to them,"
¹
and the York magicians had proved the truth of this for a number of years.

In the autumn of 1806 they received an addition in a gentleman called John Segundus. At the first meeting that he attended Mr Segundus rose and addressed the society. He began by complimenting the gentlemen upon their distinguished history; he listed the many celebrated magicians and historians that had at one time or another belonged to the York society. He hinted that it had been no small inducement to him in coming to York to know of the existence of such a society. Northern magicians, he reminded his audience, had always been better respected than southern ones. Mr Segundus said that he had studied magic for many years and knew the histories of all the great magicians of long ago. He read the new publications upon the subject and had even made a modest contribution to their number, but recently he had begun to wonder why the great feats of magic that he read about remained on the pages of his book and were no longer seen in the street or written about in the newspapers. Mr Segundus wished to know, he said, why modern magicians were unable to work the magic they wrote about. In short, he wished to know why there was no more magic done in England.