Mr Murray was sorry to find that his two authors could not agree better, but he reflected that it probably could not be helped since both men were famous for quarrelling: Strange with Norrell, and Byr...
Many people nowadays have surnames that reveal their ancestors’ fairy origins. Otherlander and Fairchild are two.
It is impossible to say how many dinners Drawlight was invited to sit down to that day - and it is fortunate that he was never at any time much of an eater or he might have done some lasting damage to...
Hush, sir! whispered the man, Your voice. It is too loud. You will wake him up! Wake him up? Who? The man under the hedge, sir. He is a magician. Did you never hear that if you wake a magician before...
Can a magician kill a man by magic? Lord Wellington asked Strange.Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. I suppose a magician might, he admitted, but a gentleman never could.
After two hours it stopped raining and in the same moment the spell broke, which Peroquet and the Admiral and Captain Jumeau knew by a curious twist of their senses, as if they had tasted a string qua...
She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.
It seemed that it was not only live magicians which Mr. Norrell despised. He had taken the measure of all the dead ones too and found them wanting.
It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Oth...
I hope there may be bogs and that John McKenzie may drown in them.
Had it not been for Mr. Drawlight and Mr. Lascelles (benevolent souls!) the Town would have been starved of information of any sort, but they drove diligently about London making their appearance in a...
Besides, said Mr Norrell, I really have no desire to write reviews of other people's books. Modern publications upon magic are the most pernicious things in the world, full of misinformation and wrong...
And a couple of days later he sent Strange a haggis (a sort of Scotch pudding) as a present.
Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the of a colour - as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green tho...
There are some things which have no business being put into books for all the world to read.
Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant. This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir? he said. My kingdoms? exclaimed the gentleman in s...
Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhap...
Mr Norrell assured Mr Strange that he would find war very disagreeable. One is often wet and cold upon a battlefield. You will like it a great deal less than you suppose.
When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing ... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of magic.
They were Englishmen and, to them, the decline of other nations was the most natural thing in the world. They belonged to a race blessed with so sensitive an appreciation of its own talents (and so do...