Clarke, Susanna 1959-

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Clarke, Susanna 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959, in Nottingham, England; daughter of a Methodist minister; partner of Colin Greenland (a novelist and reviewer). Education: Attended St. Hilda's College, Oxford.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cambridge, England. Agent— Jonny Geller, Curtis Brown Group, Ltd., Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, England.

CAREER:

Fiat Motor Company, Turin, Italy, English teacher, 1990-91; English teacher in Bilbao, Spain, 1991-92; Simon & Schuster/Martin Press, Cambridge, England, editor, 1993-2003; has also worked for publishers Gordon Fraser and Quarto Books.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, Mythopoeic Society, 2005, and Hugo Award, 2005, both for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

WRITINGS:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (novel), Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2004.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2006.

Short stories included in anthologies such as Starlight 1, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tor Books (New York, NY), 1996, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Tenth Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.

SIDELIGHTS:

As the eldest daughter of a Methodist minister, British novelist Susanna Clarke traveled frequently and spent much of her childhood in Scotland and the northern parts of England. As an adult, much of her career has been devoted to publishing. Clarke has published several short stories, one of which—"Mr. Simonell; or, The Fairy Widower"—was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award in 2001. Her debut novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, is a voluminous work about the rebirth of magic in Regency England. Published to considerable acclaim, it won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and the Hugo Award. Clarke wrote the novel over the course of ten years, during early mornings and rare idle times while she worked as a cookbook editor for Simon & Schuster's Martin Press imprint in Cambridge, England. Ten years "is a crazy amount of time to spend on anything—except building a cathedral, growing a garden, or educating a child," Clarke remarked in an interview on the Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Web site. But Clarke harbored a deep affection for magicians, and her desire to write was powerful—inspired, she said, by "boredom, probably. And a restless, intrusive sort of imagination. I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually this led to making up stories and writing things down."

In the early nineteenth century of the novel's opening, magic has all but disappeared from England. Mr. Norrell, a bookish and fastidious person, convinces the Learned Society of York Magicians of his abilities as a practical magician able to wield the old ways to achieve tangible results. Norrell establishes himself as a genuine magician in London, where he proves his abilities by resurrecting Miss Wintertown, the recently deceased fiancée of Norrell's patron. Norrell's feat, however, requires a bargain with the king of Faerie, who claims half of Miss Wintertown's reanimated existence as payment for providing the magic behind Norrell's spells. Norrell's magic is prodigiously powerful but requires true effort to accomplish real results, and it often presents unexpected outcomes. The bargain that Norrell must strike with the Faerie king to reanimate Miss Wintertown has repercussions felt throughout the entire novel. "Clarke manages to portray magic as both a believably complex and tedious labor, and an eerie world of signs and wonders where every object may have secret meaning," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Jonathan Strange, a young and charming practical magician, is an aristocratic dilettante who takes up magic almost as a lark but who quickly excels at it. Strange becomes Norrell's student, and the two of them are recruited to use their sorceries to help England and the duke of Wellington in the war against Napoleon. While Norrell performs his magic from his library, Strange "joins Wellington in the field and proves of pivotal importance in the Peninsular Campaign and at Waterloo," related Michael Dirda in the Washington Post Book World. "Indeed," Dirda continued, "the hundred pages devoted to his use of magic to shift the tide of battle are so brilliantly integrated into known history that they seem as true as anything in a reliable life of Wellington or in David Chandler's classic Campaigns of Napoleon."

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell gathered the unavoidable—but generally well-meaning and favorable—comparisons to J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. Some critics have even hailed the book as a "Harry Potter for grown-ups," in the words of the Publishers Weekly contributor. But the novel's dense style and copious footnotes, as well as its darker elements, mean it "is not kid friendly, although precocious kids may go for it," observed Lev Grossman in Time. Instead, the book exists as "a richly imagined historical fantasy … featuring edgy, disturbing atmospheric magic, but blended with the kind of urbane, amusing comedy-of-manners you expect in a Regency drawing-room"—that is, "the rare adult fantasy novel that will transfer without embarrassment into the mainstream," remarked Benedicte Page in Bookseller. Though Clarke started her novel well before the Potter phenomenon, "while I was writing, Harry Potter happened, and the world changed in a way that seemed very favorable to me," Clarke commented in an interview with Jessica Stockton in Publishers Weekly.

"Many books are to be read, some are to be studied, and a few are meant to be lived in for weeks," Dirda remarked. "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is of this last kind." The book is "a chimera of a novel that combines the dark mythology of fantasy with the delicious social comedy of Jane Austen into a masterpiece of the genre that rivals Tolkien," commented Grossman. Library Journal reviewer Cynthia Johnson remarked that the novel's "rather lackluster title does a grave disservice to a story of tremendous imagination and exquisite style." Gregory Maguire, writing in the New York Times Book Review, commented that "Clarke's imagination is prodigious, her pacing is masterly and she knows how to employ dry humor in the service of majesty." Booklist reviewer Brad Hooper commented that given Clarke's decade-long labor on the book, "the author's arduous task results in a smashing success—it's an exceptionally compelling, brilliantly creative, and historically fine-tuned piece of work."

Clarke followed this impressive debut with The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, a collection of eight short stories—most of which were previously published—that gives the reader a chance to explore the origins of the author's magic-laden Victorian England. In the title story, "The Ladies of Grace Adieu," Jonathan Strange makes a cameo appearance in a tale that puts paid to the notion that real ladies do not partake of magic. In another tale, Mary, Queen of Scotts, attempts to rid herself and the country of Queen Elizabeth I by using a piece of enchanted embroidery. The tale "On Lickerish Hill," presents a strong female narrator bent upon discovering the name of a fairy, while in "The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse," the duke discovers the land of faerie just outside his own garden wall. Writing in the New Statesman, Sarah Savitt observed that "Clarke's magic is intensely English: it relies on class-conscious scholar-magicians and silver-haired fairies who mourn the nation's industrialization," and that with her first novel, the writer "transformed the spells and wizardry into something exciting, grown-up and somehow exceedingly modern." However, Savitt averred, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories is "miniature by comparison" to that novel, as well as "stuffy and restrained."

Other reviewers had a much higher assessment of the short story collection. Liza Nelson, writing in People, found that the "captivating if sometimes elusive stories are an enticing introduction to Clarke's alternate universe." Writing in London's Financial Times, Matthew Creasy concluded: "Beyond the contrivances of style and the fantasy genre, these short stories of magic and fairies also have sly and significant things to say about the position of women in society." In the Spectator, critic Philip Womack asserted that The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories is "a wonderful collection, something to please the palate until the next novel comes out."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 2004, Brad Hooper, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. 1797; September 15, 2006, Elizabeth Dickie, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, p. 26.

Bookseller, May 14, 2004, Benedicte Page, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. 26; August 12, 2005, "Clarke Wins a Hugo," p. 7.

Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), October 15, 2006, Charity Vogel, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.

Canberra Times (Canberra, Australia), January 27, 2007, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.

Entertainment Weekly, October 13, 2006, Jeff Jensen, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, p. 137.

Financial Times (London, England), November 11, 2006, Matthew Creasy, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, p. 47.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2006, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, p. S6; August 1, 2006, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, p. 740.

Library Journal, August, 2004, Cynthia Johnson, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. 64.

Miami Herald, October 31, 2006, Gigi Lehman, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.

New Statesman, September 27, 2004, Amanda Craig, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. 82; November 6, 2006, Sarah Savitt, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, p. 59.

New York Times, September 17, 2004, Janet Maslin, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. E27.

New York Times Book Review, September 5, 2004, Gregory Maguire, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. 11.

New York Times Magazine, August 1, 2004, John Hodgman, "Susanna Clarke's Magic Book," pp. 20-23.

People, November 13, 2006, Liza Nelson, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, p. 51.

Publishers Weekly, July 12, 2004, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. 41, and Jessica Stockton, "Harry Potter Meets History," interview with Susanna Clarke; August 9, 2004, Charlotte Abbott, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. 133; September 13, 2004, Daisy Maryles, "Oh, Susanna!," p. 20; July 31, 2006, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, p. 46.

Seattle Times, November 1, 2006, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.

Spectator, October 14, 2006, Philip Womack, review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.

Time, August 16, 2004, Lev Grossman, "Of Magic and Men: Susanna Clarke's Ravishing Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Is a Superb Post-Potter Fantasy for Grownups," p. 74.

Washington Post Book World, September 5, 2004, Michael Dirda, review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, p. T15.