Susanna Clarke Quote
Oh! it is an excellent thing, enthused a lady. See how the darkness of the mirror behind the figures sets off Mr Strange’s head. People always imagine that magicians and mirrors go together, complained Mr Norrell. There is no mirror in that part of my library. Artists are tricky fellows, sir, forever reshaping the world according to some design of their own, said Strange. Indeed they are not unlike magicians in that. And yet he has made a curious piece of work of it. It is more like a door than a mirror – it is so dark. I can almost feel a draught coming from it. I do not like to see myself sitting so close to it – I am afraid that I may catch cold.
Oh! it is an excellent thing, enthused a lady. See how the darkness of the mirror behind the figures sets off Mr Strange’s head. People always imagine that magicians and mirrors go together, complained Mr Norrell. There is no mirror in that part of my library. Artists are tricky fellows, sir, forever reshaping the world according to some design of their own, said Strange. Indeed they are not unlike magicians in that. And yet he has made a curious piece of work of it. It is more like a door than a mirror – it is so dark. I can almost feel a draught coming from it. I do not like to see myself sitting so close to it – I am afraid that I may catch cold.
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About Susanna Clarke
Two years later, she published a collection of her short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (2006). Both Clarke's debut novel and her short stories are set in a magical England and written in a pastiche of the styles of 19th-century writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. While Strange focuses on the relationship of two men, Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, the stories in Ladies focus on the power women gain through magic.
Clarke's second novel, Piranesi, was published in September 2020, winning the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction.
In January 2024, she stated that she was currently working on a novel set in Bradford, England.