I wrote to Susanna’s editor telling her that it was to my mind the finest work of English fantasy written in the previous seventy years. (I was thinking that the only thing it could be compared to was Hope Mirrlee’s novel Lud-in-the-Mist. Sometimes people would ask me about Tolkien, and I would explain that I did not, and do not, think of The Lord of the Rings as English Fantasy but as High Fantasy.) It was a novel about the reconciliation of the mundane and the miraculous, in which the world of faerie and the world of men are, perhaps, not as divided as they appear, but might simply be different ways of addressing the same thing.
— Neil Gaiman, 1
Lots to unpack here in Gaiman’s partial paragraph, lifted from the 2009 introduction of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
For expediency’s sake, I’m going to assume that Gaiman defines English fantasy as fantasy specifically set in England, which includes the Narnia books, Stardust, Lud-in-the-Mist (of course) and possibly Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter, although Dunsany also crosses into High Fantasy with a vengeance, and actually staked out the borders of High Fantasy better than anyone else, and besides, my memory of exactly where Erl is is a little fuzzy. Doesn’t matter—the language is straight out of King James by way of The Worm Ouroboros** and you can’t get more English (well, Irish, actually) than that.
Anyway, “the finest work of English fantasy written in the previous seventy years” is a bold claim, and one that I think Gaiman nails cold. There is simply no other book quite like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. When it was first published in 2004, reviewers led with the inevitable comparisons to Harry Potter, but Hogwarts is a far country from Clarke’s England. Clarke’s prose is more mannered and poetic, her magic stranger and more uncanny, more amoral than Rowling’s Manichean Death Eaters vs. Dumbledore’s Army. Editorial comparisons to Rowling are rooted in publishing dates, not subject matter.
How to talk about a novel that’s so completely original that there are no real comparisons? It’s a Regency piece, not only set in the period of King George III, but written in the style, with all the intricacies of manner and delicacy of tone one expects of Austen. And yet...it is so much stranger; it’s a novel of manners and ambition and the way magic breaks into the world. It’s about poor solitary Norrell — fearful, crabbed, jealous, insecure Norrell, and his rivalry/partnership with Strange — fearless, expansive, impulsive, dangerous Strange. It’s about the destructiveness of misunderstood intentions. It’s about the Napoleonic Wars and the Madness of King George, the gentleman with the thistledown hair and the servant Stephen Black, poor kidnapped Lady Pole and the more kidnapped Arabella; it’s about con-man Vinculus the Magician of Threadneedle-Street and kindly Segundus and his friends, slimy Drawlight and even slimier Lascelles, and it’s about Childermass, the common servant who is so much more than that. Most of all, though, it’s about the character who isn’t present: John Uskglass, the Raven King who left England and took magic with him three hundred years ago, who still reigns in Faerie and in his realm on the other side of Hell.
I reached out my hand; England’s rivers turned and flowed the other way;
I reached out my hand; my enemies’s blood stopt in their veins;
I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies’ heads like a flock of starlings;
My enemies crumpled like empty sacks.
I came to them out of mists and rain;
I came to them in dreams at midnight;
I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn;
When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood.
The rain made a door for me and I went through it;
The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it;
Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever;
England was given to me to be mine forever.
The nameless slave wore a silver crown;
The nameless slave was a king in a strange country.
The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics;
Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts;
Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell’s sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory.
I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritance
But Englishmen have despised my gift.
Magic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it;
Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it;
In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it.
Two magicians shall appear in England.
The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me;
The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction;
The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache;
The second shall see his dearest possession in his enemy’s hand.
The first shall pass his life alone; he shall be his own gaoler;
The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside.
I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me.
The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it;
The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it.
The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown.
The nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country….
— From the Prophecy of the Raven King, 2, pp. 120-124
“Two magicians shall appear in England.” The relationship between the two, principally Norrell’s jealousy, insecurity, and fervent wish to be the only practicing magician in England, drives great currents in the novel; making a bargain he should not make (one of many, but this one with the gentleman with the thistledown hair) he unwittingly opens the door to Faerie. That door is easily opened, but much harder to close, just as Faerie is easy to enter, but much harder to leave. And then there’s Strange’s ambition, which becomes a monomania albeit with the best of intentions. Behind it all, casting long shadows, is the Raven King.
Gaiman’s introductory comment, that “the world of faerie and the world of men are, perhaps, not as divided as they appear, but might simply be different ways of addressing the same thing” provides a way to talk about the novel. After all, the England of Clarke’s novel is historically solid...to a point. England is at war with France; it’s Wellington versus Napoleon. George III is on the throne and he’s quite insane. And the London gentry is hungry for good manners and better gossip.
However, this England has an alternate history, that some time after William the Conqueror, a rival king appeared out of Faerie and forced Henry I to divide the country between north and south, the Faerie king, the Raven King, John Uskglass who has many names and is still nameless, taking the north, until his mysterious disappearance three hundred years ago. He did, however, leave a book of prophecies — a book that proves both incredibly important and remarkably elusive. Oh, and George III isn’t as insane as he might appear, while a fair bit of the action turns upon his madness and his kingship; in fact, there are a great many remarkable things in Regency England that are not quite as they appear.
At almost 800 pages, just outlining the plot would be a ponderous thing, and I’m not going to attempt it. Clarke’s narrative style is dry and witty, remarkably lean for such a large book, and one that plays with multitudinous literary conventions and features cameos by, among others, Byron, the Shelleys and 17 dead Neapolitans. At its heart, it’s a story about stories, a book about books and the love of books more than it is about flesh-and-blood characters. If you embrace the joy of reading for the love of reading, it’s an unmixed pleasure. In fact, I’m tempted to propose a group read, just for the fun of it.
Of course, Jonathan Strange has its detractors. No less a distinguished person than novelist Michael Faber criticized the novel for its “low emotional temperature” and hollow characters:
[O]verall this large, loquacious book has nothing much to say, the plot creaks frightfully in many places and the pace dawdles.
While Gregory Maguire wrote in The New York Times:
Prolixity is risky: a writer can take relish in perhaps more physical detail than is required. Risky, too, is the impulse to deepen the back story; it can threaten to overwhelm the plot. (In 185 dense footnotes, an ungainly amount of invented and somewhat parodic scholarly material weighs upon this novel.)
But then, both reviewers were writing in 2004 when Strange was first published, and Harry Potter splashed around in literary puddles like a great white whale. Such comparisons and need for comparisons rooted in the milieu of fifteen years ago, no longer apply, and reviews produced under deadline (that require quick reads and snappy commentary) no longer ring quite so authoritative. And the footnotes are a great joy — actually, they’re my favorite part of the novel.
It remains true that the characters in Jonathan Strange remain...well, more standoffish than we’re accustomed to, but that is more a product of our own conditioned expectations — these days we assume we’ll get access to the beating heart of each character — as well as the conventions the Clarke has taken for the novel. The traditions of Regency and Victorian style novels are not conducive to inner monologue or deeply-felt emotion. Don’t look for what you wouldn’t find in Austen, or Dickens — because they are Clarke’s peers, far more than Rowling. Harry Potter for grownups? No. Enchantment of a peculiarly English flavor, and more than a dash of strangeness all its own? Absolutely.
Let me know if you want to read or re-read it. I’m game. We could start as early as a month from now, or a little later.
Obviously, Hurricane Florence hit farther south than we had feared it would last Monday, which is a powerfully mixed bag for me. The Shenandoah River is out of its banks, but it isn’t flowing through the kitchen, as I expected it would; however, it’s not possible to watch the news and not be torn by the images and accounts and the death toll. I’m less relieved than I am chastened, and wishing well for everyone in the way of harm.
**Beware of Createspace links for both The King of Elfland’s Daughter and The Worm Ouroboros. They’re reprints of public domain works. If you want a real physical book (as I prefer) try Abebooks, where both books are available, cheap, and in the authoritative editions.
Notes
1. Neil Gaiman, “The Thing of It Is: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.” Reprinted in The View from the Cheap Seats. NY: William Morrow, 2016, pp. 438-442.
2. Susanna Clarke. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. NY: Bloomsbury, 2004.