Susanna Clarke

Susanna Mary Clarke (born 1 November 1959) is an English author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller.

Two years later, she published a collection of her short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (2006). Both Clarke's debut novel and her short stories are set in a magical England and written in a pastiche of the styles of 19th-century writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. While Strange focuses on the relationship of two English magicians with opposing views, Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, the stories in Ladies focus on the power female characters gain through magic.

Clarke's second novel, Piranesi, was published in September 2020, and won the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction.

In January 2024, she stated that she was currently working on a novel set in Bradford, England.

Biography

Early life Clarke was born on 1 November 1959 in Nottingham, England, the eldest daughter of a Methodist minister and his wife. Owing to her father's posts, she spent her childhood in various towns across Northern England and Scotland, receiving her degree in 1981.

For eight years, she worked in publishing at Quarto and Gordon Fraser. There she began working on her first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Clarke first developed the idea for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell while she was teaching in Bilbao: "I had a kind of waking dream ... about a man in 18th-century clothes in a place rather like Venice, talking to some English tourists. And I felt strongly that he had some sort of magical background – he'd been dabbling in magic, and something had gone badly wrong." She had also recently reread J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and afterwards was inspired to "[try] writing a novel of magic and fantasy".

After she returned from Spain in 1993, Clarke began to think seriously about writing her novel. She signed up for a five-day fantasy and science-fiction writing workshop, co-taught by science fiction and fantasy writers Colin Greenland and Geoff Ryman. The students were expected to prepare a short story before attending, but Clarke only had "bundles" of material for her novel. From this she extracted "The Ladies of Grace Adieu", a fairy tale about three women secretly practising magic who are discovered by the famous Jonathan Strange. Greenland was so impressed with the story that, without Clarke's knowledge, he sent an excerpt to his friend, the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. Gaiman later said, "It was terrifying from my point of view to read this first short story that had so much assurance ... It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata." Colin Greenland, Clarke's partner, did not read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell until it was published.

Clarke spent the next ten years working on the novel in her spare time. She also published stories in Starlight 2 (1998) and Starlight 3 (2001); according to The New York Times Magazine, her work was known and appreciated by a small group of fantasy fans and critics on the internet.

Clarke was never sure if she would finish her novel or if it would be published. "clung to this method" "because I felt that if I went back and started at the beginning, [the novel] would lack depth, and I would just be skimming the surface of what I could do. But if I had known it was going to take me ten years, I would never have begun. I was buoyed up by thinking that I would finish it next year, or the year after next." Bloomsbury were so sure the novel would be a success that they offered Clarke a £1 million advance. They printed 250,000 hardcover copies simultaneously in the United States, Britain, and Germany. Seventeen translations were begun before the first English publication was released on 8 September 2004 in the United States and on 30 September in the United Kingdom.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is an alternate history novel set in 19th-century England during the Napoleonic Wars. It is based on the premise that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centring on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of Englishness and the boundary between reason and madness. It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and an historical novel and draws on various Romantic literary traditions, such as the comedy of manners, the Gothic tale, and the Byronic hero. Clarke's style has frequently been described as a pastiche, particularly of 19th-century British writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and George Meredith. The supernatural is contrasted with and highlighted by mundane details and Clarke's tone combines arch wit with antiquarian quaintness. The text is supplemented with almost 200 footnotes, outlining the backstory and an entire fictional corpus of magical scholarship. The novel was well received by critics and reached number three on the New York Times best-seller list,

A seven-part adaptation of the book by the BBC began broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 17 May 2015. The book was adapted by Peter Harness, directed by Toby Haynes, and produced by Cuba Pictures and Feel Films.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

In 2006, Clarke published a collection of eight fairy tales presented as the work of several different writers, seven of which had been previously anthologized. The volume's focus on "female mastery of the dark arts" is reflected in the ladies of Grace Adieu's magical abilities and the prominent role needlework plays in saving the Duke of Wellington and Mary, Queen of Scots. The collection is a "sly, frequently comical, feminist revision" of Jonathan Strange. In tone, the stories are similar to the novel—"nearly every one of them is told in a lucid, frequently deadpan, bedtime-story voice strikingly similar to the voice that narrates the novel." Reviewers highlighted this tale, one calling it "the most striking story" of the collection and "a staunchly feminist take on power relations". In her review of the volume in Strange Horizons, Victoria Hoyle writes that "there is something incredibly precise, clean, and cold about Clarke's portrayal of 'women's magic' in this story (and throughout the collection)—it is urgent and desperate, but it is also natural and in the course of things."

The collection received many positive reviews, though some critics compared the short stories unfavourably with the highly acclaimed and more substantial Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Hoyle wrote in her review that "the stories ... are consistently subtle and enchanting, and as charismatic as any reader could wish, but, while the collection has the panache of the novel, it lacks its glorious self-possession." She was, in 2004, working on a book that begins a few years after Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell ends and which would involve characters who, as Clarke said, are "a bit lower down the social scale". that progress on the book had been slowed by her ill health. In 2006 it was reported that she suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. Clarke found that writing the sequel to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was becoming too complex considering her illness, and she returned instead to an earlier project with fewer characters and requiring less research – which became her second novel. While writing this book she moved to Derbyshire. Piranesi was published on 15 September 2020 by Bloomsbury. The audiobook is narrated by actor Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Awards and nominations

List of works Novels

Collections

Short stories Clarke has published her short stories in multiple publications, including traditional press and newspapers as well as radio broadcast. This list contains the first publication of each as well as first appearance of "John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner" in her collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.

Radio dramas