Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

A Novel

Paperback, 856 pages

English language

Published Oct. 29, 2005 by Bloomsbury.

ISBN:
978-1-58234-603-8
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OCLC Number:
61660468

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5 stars (1 review)

Published in 2004, it is an alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Its premise is that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes/stereotypes.

It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel. It inverts the Industrial Revolution conception of the North-South divide in England: in this book the North is romantic and magical, rather than rational and concrete.

38 editions

Subjects

  • Teacher-student relationships -- Fiction
  • Magicians -- Fiction
  • Fairies -- Fiction
  • London (England) -- Fiction
  • York (England) -- Fiction