page_title: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
section_title: Genre
hierarchical_section_title: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell / Genre
caption_attribution_description: en:George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
context_page_description: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the debut novel by British writer Susanna Clarke. Published in 2004, it is an alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Its premise is that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred 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 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.
  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 careful detail.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: In the novel, Lord Byron (pictured) models the lead of Manfred after Jonathan Strange.[20]
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