I conducted this interview via email with Susanna Clarke, the multi-award-winning author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
Hello and a Happy New Year to all Friends of English Magic.2006 was in many ways a great year for Colin and me. We got to spend lots of time in Derbyshire where we can see fields and stone and English grey-and-greenness in every direction. But it was also a bit frustrating. I’ve been dogged by ill-health for two years now and it’s holding up progress on any new work rather seriously. I’m fortunate that everyone (publishers and agents) is very understanding, very supportive. And I’m ultra-fortunate in having Colin to take care of me so cheerfully.
2007 is already off to a better start. Over the New Year I finished a new short story for BBC Radio to be broadcast later on in the year.
A big, heartfelt thanks to Martyn, as always, for organising all this, and a sincere thanks to everyone who asked a question. I hope the answers go some way to satisfying the questioners. They’re certainly very illuminating for me — they make me realise what I know about this world, what I don’t know, what I need to find out and sometimes what I’m better off not knowing.
And now, the questions along with their answers:
1. You mentioned some of the strange things in Starecross Hall during Mr Segundus’ first visit to the place. Is there something special about Starecross or the objects inside it that we don’t know about?
Not so much. I haven’t reckoned on Starecross having any further significance in Strange and Norrell’s world, but then again, who knows? The objects inside Starecross reflect the sort of collections you can still see in some English country houses—stuffed animals and birds, satirical prints, keys, coins, and Roman and Greek antiquities. I exaggerated the oddity of Starecross’s collections to make them more intriguing to the reader. I couldn’t include everything I wanted. I wanted some pictures of dinosaurs fighting, but dinosaurs weren’t known until a bit later in the century.
Starecross, the village, was loosely based on Wycoller, a village on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border. I say “loosely” because I’ve never actually been there; I’ve only seen photos. A month or so ago, I met a neighbour who asked me about Strange and Norrell, and he wanted to know if Starecross was based anywhere, and if so, whether it was Wycoller. I thought he was very clever. Anyway, he’s lent me a brilliant book about Wycoller. Apparently the family who lived at the Hall were indeed a bit eccentric. In the eighteenth century, one of the squires loved hunting and sports. When he got too old to go hunting, he became passionate about cockfighting and had cockfights in his drawing room. As he grew older and more infirm, he moved the fights to his bedroom, where he watched them from his bed. And when he finally got too old to turn his head, he had mirrors placed around the fights so he could follow them. I wish I’d known all these details earlier, because they would have been great to include in the story.
2. In Tom Brightwind, you mention that there are many Tom and David stories; in Mr Simonelli, who is named in JS&MN as one of the human kings in Faerie, the hero fantasises about what kind of a king he would be. Do you have plans to write more about the adventures of any of these characters in the future?
I’m not sure about writing more Tom and David stories, though I wouldn’t rule it out. In my mind, those stories were all of a particular type: Tom was a rogue, riding rough-shod over everyone; David was decent and kind-hearted, fooling himself into thinking he’d taught Tom a moral lesson, when in truth he hadn’t done anything of the sort. Tom might well turn up again, but I couldn’t promise he’d be recognisable as the same person from the Tom and David stories (where David is a sort of civilising influence, however faint). Tom is ancient and has been very wild and dangerous for millennia. And he wouldn’t always have been called Tom; the name is originally Hebrew, so only fairies adopted it once they’d come into contact with Christianity.
As for David, I suspect the next person to turn up called David Montefiore won’t be that David Montefiore, but someone else.
Oh, and I’d definitely like to write more about Mr Simonelli. I’m very attached to Mr Simonelli, exasperating as he is. Clearly, interesting things happen to him.
3. You’ve said that you know the Raven King’s mediaeval history well. Do you intend to tell more of that story in the future? Directly or indirectly?
As long as I’m writing about Strange and Norrell’s world, more information about John Uskglass will keep coming through. As to whether I ever tell his story directly, I’ve no idea. There’s other stuff I need to write first.
4. How is Childermass?
He’s pretty good, thanks for asking. He’s always very busy. At this time of year, I picture him riding along a lonely, foggy road, his hair and hat clogged with beads of moisture, pursuing some impenetrable project, thinking hard, putting puzzle pieces together, then stopping at an inn to drink hot spiced ale by the fireside. He likes to be solitary, but he fits in with rural labourers and urban working-class people — the people Strange and Norrell never spoke to. He obtains a lot of information that way.
5. I know you have been asked if you have a favourite character in JS&MN … Do you have a favourite character, or one you particularly identify with among the many in the “Ladies of Grace Adieu” collection?
I do like Fanny in “Mrs Mabb.” She seems very real to me—someone who’s impossible to live with because she’s so aggravating, but who actually has a very kind heart. She seems particularly Austenish to me, probably because she is always talking and never listening, and Austen was particularly adept at characters like that.
6. Which part of the book (tLoGA) was the most fun to write, which gave you the most satisfaction when you’d finally got it right, and, with hindsight, is there any part that you feel dissatisfied with, and why?
“The Charcoal Burner” was the most fun to write. It was a pleasure to write the saints. Two of them were quite sweet, but the third was rather sarcastic, not at all how people imagine saints. I started it while I was writing the last few chapters of S&N, but I couldn’t work out how it would go, so I left it as a brief mention in a conversation between Mr Lascelles and Mr Norrell (and a footnote). Later I came back and researched British/Irish saints and Cumbrian churches. Then it wrote itself rapidly. The most satisfying was the title story, “The Ladies of Grace Adieu,” itself. It was the first story I had written since childhood, and I wasn’t sure I could actually do it. When I finished it, I was quite pleased with myself.
“Mr Simonelli” is, in many ways, my favourite story of all, but it is set in Derbyshire and includes a brief section in which a local woman speaks. Now that I’ve lived in Derbyshire for a year myself, I can see that the rhythms of her speech are quite wrong. That’s dissatisfying. If I could rewrite that part, I’d like to capture how people in Derbyshire really speak.
7. You seem to specifically emphasise English magic throughout JS&MN. As I recall, magic rarely just returns—it is English magic. Is English magic very different from that of other places? Did other nations lose their magic as England did, and if so, is it coming back? Can you perform English magic outside England, or is it tied to the land?
This is an important question, and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t think much about it until I was nearing the end of writing Strange and Norrell.
Yes, you can do English magic outside England. We know this because Strange does magic in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium (and for an hour or so in America). Nevertheless, English magic is tied to the land. Let me explain this apparent contradiction. Human magic is borrowed from fairies, who don’t consider it special. To them, it’s just part of normal life. If a fairy wants something, he asks his friends—the Wind, the Rain, the Hills, the Stars, etc.—to help him get it. English magicians developed magic — made it less fundamental, less natural, but ultimately they were drawing on the goodwill of the English Wind, the English Rain, the English Hills and those stars that you can see from the Sussex Wolds or Birmingham or Carlisle. So English magic was like a conversation between the magicians and England.
English magic is particularly strong because of John Uskglass, a child stolen from England and taken to Faerie, where he learnt fairy magic and gained a fairy kingdom before returning to England to gain an English kingdom. He then taught his magic to other humans. This was mainly because he was a generous sort of person — he usually is. He also had two kinds of subjects—fairies and humans—and he saw that he needed to get them to bond and become one people. Getting them to do magic together was a clever way to do this.
On the other hand, how is English magic? As we’ve seen, it comes from fairies. And John Uskglass didn’t initially think of himself as English. He claimed to be Norman, which (if true) meant his grandfather came over from Normandy with William the Conqueror. And in the 19th century, Jonathan Strange’s mother was Scottish.
At the end of JS&MN there’s a footnote about a Scottish magician and Scottish magic. And Jennifer-Oksana’s is an Introduction to The Books of Caribbean Magic (2nd Edition): a lively piece of fan fiction crossing JS&MN with Pirates of the Caribbean. Other countries have their own magics—I can’t see why they wouldn’t. Overall, I suspect English magic has the edge, thanks to Uskglass.
8. How do you inject humour into your stories? Is it a magpie method of collecting funny ideas day to day? Or is it more deliberate?
Hmm, never thought much about this. I suppose the humour comes from the characters.
Or maybe it’s like this. I don’t read widely or watch a wide variety of television, but when I like something, I tend to get to know it very well, very quickly. I get a bit obsessed. Most of the humorous television I watch is American — Buffy, Firefly, The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy (so naughty), and, above all, King of the Hill. I adore Hank Hill. (“I’m not some redneck, and I’m not a Hollywood jerk. I’m complicated.”) Most of the funny books I read are in English —like P.G. Wodehouse, Charles Dickens, and Terry Pratchett. I like Pratchett’s philosophical jokes more than the slapstick bits about sausages and odours.
I read or watch these things, learn them pretty well, and then subconsciously reproduce that sort of humour when I write.
9. Any news from New Line on the JS&MN movie?
Ah well, movies grow slowly. We’re still at the script stage, working to get it right. Whenever a draft is ready, I read it and add my insights, which the producers and scriptwriter may or may not attend to, as they see fit. Of course, I always hope they will. But it’s fascinating to see your own characters through another writer’s eyes.