"Vivid and amusing...Magically funny."-Ursula K. LeGuin, Los Angeles Times An enchanting collection of stories, set in the same world, from the author of the award-winning, internationally bestselling Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Following the international bestseller Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke returns with an enchanting collection of stories brimming with all the ingredients of good fairy tales: petulant princesses, vengeful owls, ladies who pass their time in embroidering terrible fates, endless paths in deep, dark woods, and houses that never appear the same way twice. The heroines and heroes who must grapple with these problems include the Duke of Wellington, a conceited Regency clergyman, an eighteenth-century Jewish doctor, and Mary Queen of Scots, as well as two characters from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell; Strange himself and the Raven King. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories introduces readers to a world where charm is always tempered by eerieness, and picaresque comedy is always darkened by the disturbing shadow of Faerie.
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Strange & Norrell
3 books in catalog
Alternative history and speculative fiction received a distinct contribution through the meticulous nineteenth-century pastiche and intricate magical lore of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. English author Susanna Clarke established her reputation with this expansive debut, blending historical realism with supernatural fiction.
Born on November 1, 1959, in Nottingham, England, Susanna Mary Clarke spent a nomadic childhood in towns across Northern England and Scotland. After graduating from St. Hilda's College, Oxford, she taught English as a foreign language abroad before returning to the United Kingdom to work as a cookery book editor in publishing. Her focus shifted toward novel writing after attending a fantasy-writing workshop in the early 1990s.
Clarke began writing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in 1993, stitching the narrative together from fragments in her spare time over a ten-year period while publishing short fiction in the same universe. Bloomsbury acquired the manuscript in 2003 and published it in 2004. The novel became an international bestseller, earning the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, and British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year in 2005, alongside a longlisting for the Man Booker Prize. She followed her debut with the short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories in 2006 and her 2020 novel Piranesi, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award.
Clarke's prose features high-literary pastiche, authentic nineteenth-century narrative framing, and elaborate faux-scholarly footnotes that establish an immersive historical reality. Her narratives regularly address academic rivalries, hidden supernatural realms, ancient fairy lore, solitude, and the tension between rigid institutional control and wild magic.
