Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke
Susanna Mary Clarkeis an English author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 November 1959
country laughter mind
There was very little about her face and figure that was in any way remarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated by conversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lovely disposition, a quick mind and a fondness for the comical. She was always very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion to outshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three countries.
senior country names
She even learnt the language of a strange country which Senior Cosetti had been told some people believed still existed, although no-one in the world could say where it was. The name of this country was Wales.
dream country people
I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.
convincing magicians
In 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,' I wanted to create the most convincing story of magic and magicians that I could.
I had to restrain myself from buying a book on 19th-century fruit knives.
confess fanny rather spite teens
I must confess that in my teens and twenties, I loved 'Mansfield Park' rather in spite of Fanny than because of her. Like Fanny's rich, sophisticated cousins, I didn't really get her.
characters glamorous quite seemed
It seemed to me that you make magic real by making it a little prosaic, a little difficult and disappointing - never quite as glamorous as the other characters imagine.
alan born british moore printer worker
Alan Moore is a peculiarly unsung triumph of British culture, and Northampton, where he was born in 1953, the son of brewery worker Ernest and printer Sylvia, is where you must go to find him.
compared jane tale
'Pride and Prejudice' is often compared to 'Cinderella,' but Jane Austen's real 'Cinderella' tale is 'Mansfield Park.'
good grounding lots putting street stuff
One way of grounding the magic is by putting in lots of stuff about street lamps, carriages, and how difficult it is to get good servants.
characters expect gone naturally novelist playwright prepared
Nothing, I find, has prepared me for the sight of my own characters walking about. A playwright or screenwriter must expect it; a novelist doesn't and naturally concludes that she has gone mad.
defy fanny gentle given heroines jane subversive supposed utterly
She doesn't do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen's point - Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.
century home inclined
I feel very much at home in the early nineteenth century and am not inclined to leave it.
afternoon ageing alan became bought copy fan garden graphic moore novel nuclear saturday
I first became an Alan Moore fan in Covent Garden on a Saturday afternoon in 1987, when I bought a copy of 'Watchmen,' his graphic novel about ageing superheroes and nuclear apocalypse.