In an alternate history England where magic has faded into scholarly memory, the reclusive Mr Norrell reintroduces practical magic to the world and takes on the brilliant, impulsive Jonathan Strange as his pupil. Their rivalry over the proper direction of English magic plays out against the Napoleonic Wars and the fashionable drawing rooms of Regency London, while an ancient, capricious fairy lord works his own designs on the humans around them. Woven throughout with mock-scholarly footnotes cataloguing a fictional history of English magic, the novel builds toward a reckoning with the legendary Raven King, the vanished magician-monarch whose return both men fear and desire.
Books mentioned in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (5)
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth: “Sir Walter shewed Arabella the novels in the bookcase, and recommended Mrs Edgeworth's Belinda in particular as being likely to amuse her.”
Emma by Jane Austen: “I put it here, between d'Israeli's Flim-Flams and Miss Austen's Emma.”
Flim-Flams by Isaac D'Israeli: “I put it here, between d'Israeli's Flim-Flams and Miss Austen's Emma.”
A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson: “Thaumatomane: a person possessed of a passion for magic and wonders, Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.”
A Dictionary of Practical Surgery by Samuel Cooper: “I put it on the mantelpiece with Cooper's Dictionary of Practical Surgery and stood the teapot on top.”