Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
About this book
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.
Subjects
- award:hugo_award=2005
- award:hugo_award=novel
- england, fiction
- english literature
- fairies
- fantasy
- fantasy fiction
- fiction
- fiction, fantasy, historical
- fiction, historical
- fiction, historical, general
- great britain, fiction
- historical fiction
- history
- hugo award winner
- literature
- london (england), fiction
- magic
- magicians
- teachers, fiction
- teacher-student relationship
- teacher-student relationships