# Susanna Clarke
**Susanna Clarke** (born 1959 in [Nottingham](https://www.edgepedia.org/nottingham)) is a British novelist whose debut, *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell* (2004), a footnoted historical fantasy of English magic set in the [Regency era](https://www.edgepedia.org/regency-era), won the [Hugo Award](https://www.edgepedia.org/hugo-award) and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and whose second novel, *Piranesi* (2020), won the Women's Prize for Fiction.[1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke) • [2](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/susanna-clarke/) • [3](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/11/susanna-clarke-id-really-ceased-to-think-of-myself-as-a-writer)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | 1959, Nottingham, England; eldest daughter of a Methodist minister[1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke) • [4](https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell-reading-group-guide.pdf) |
| Education | BA in philosophy, politics and economics, St Hilda's College, Oxford, graduated 1981[5](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/susanna-clarke/) |
| Debut novel | *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell*, Bloomsbury, October 2004; 782 pages[4](https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell-reading-group-guide.pdf) • [6](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/jonathan-strange-amp-mr-norrell-by-susanna-clarke-755188.html) |
| Launch scale | 250,000 copies printed before publication; released in more than 34 countries[7](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/authors/susanna-clarke) • [2](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/susanna-clarke/) |
| Major awards | Hugo Award for *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell*; Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 for *Piranesi*[1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke) • [3](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/11/susanna-clarke-id-really-ceased-to-think-of-myself-as-a-writer) |
| Other books | *The Ladies of Grace Adieu* (2006), eight stories; *Piranesi* (2020)[8](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-ladies-of-grace-adieu-by-susanna-clarke-6230961.html) |
| Adaptation | Seven-episode BBC television series adapted by Peter Harness, first broadcast May 2015[1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke) |
## Early life and career
Clarke grew up in a family moved through towns across northern England and Scotland by her father's postings as a Methodist minister, and she read [Arthur Conan Doyle](https://www.edgepedia.org/arthur-conan-doyle), Dickens, and [Jane Austen](https://www.edgepedia.org/jane-austen) as a child.[5](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/susanna-clarke/) She studied philosophy, politics and economics at St Hilda's College, Oxford, graduating in 1981, then spent eight years in nonfiction publishing and taught English as a foreign language in Turin and Bilbao.[5](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/susanna-clarke/) • [1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke)
**A decade of early mornings.** In 1993 she took a job editing cookbooks for [Simon & Schuster](https://www.edgepedia.org/simon-and-schuster) in Cambridge, which she kept for ten years while writing her first novel in the early mornings.[5](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/susanna-clarke/) She was first published as a short-story writer before her novels appeared.[1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke) By the time *Piranesi* was written she described herself as having really ceased to think of herself as a writer during the long years after her debut.[3](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/11/susanna-clarke-id-really-ceased-to-think-of-myself-as-a-writer)
## Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Published by [Bloomsbury](https://www.edgepedia.org/bloomsbury) in October 2004, the novel is set in an alternative 19th-century England in which practical magic died out some three centuries earlier, surviving only as a scholarly pursuit, until the reclusive [Yorkshire](https://www.edgepedia.org/yorkshire) magician Gilbert Norrell revives it and takes the gifted, instinctive Jonathan Strange as his apprentice.[4](https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell-reading-group-guide.pdf) • [6](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/jonathan-strange-amp-mr-norrell-by-susanna-clarke-755188.html) • [9](https://time.com/3915949/review-jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell/) The two magicians help win the [Napoleonic Wars](https://www.edgepedia.org/napoleonic-wars) through occult means, and Strange serves with Wellington in the Peninsular campaign and at Waterloo.[6](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/jonathan-strange-amp-mr-norrell-by-susanna-clarke-755188.html) • [10](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/clarke-susanna-1959) Their partnership turns into rivalry: Strange's magic is wild and rooted in the myth of the Raven King and the otherworld of Faerie, while Norrell wants magic tamed, respectable, and confined to his library.[9](https://time.com/3915949/review-jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell/)
The book's most distinctive device is its apparatus of faux-scholarly footnotes, in which a supposed editor cites a vast body of fabricated magical history, written in a pastiche of leisurely 19th-century prose complete with archaic spellings such as "shew" and "chuse".[8](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-ladies-of-grace-adieu-by-susanna-clarke-6230961.html) • [6](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/jonathan-strange-amp-mr-norrell-by-susanna-clarke-755188.html) Reviewers compared the effect to Jane Austen and Dickens, and the book prompted debate about fantasy written for adult readers.[1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke) • [11](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/flitting-into-the-world-of-faerie-1.1018912)
Commercially, the launch was unusually large for a debut: publishers printed 250,000 copies before publication, and the novel appeared in more than 34 countries.[7](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/authors/susanna-clarke) • [2](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/susanna-clarke/) It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and it won the Hugo Award.[2](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/susanna-clarke/) • [1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke) In 2015 the BBC broadcast a seven-episode adaptation written by Peter Harness.[1](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke)
## The Ladies of Grace Adieu
Clarke's second book, *The Ladies of Grace Adieu* (2006), is a collection of eight stories set in the same imaginative world as the debut, a Britain riddled with gateways to Faerie.[8](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-ladies-of-grace-adieu-by-susanna-clarke-6230961.html) It extends the debut's conceit: the volume carries an introduction and commentary attributed to a professor of "Sidhe studies" at Aberdeen University, and the stories are presented as a compendium by different hands, with pen-and-ink illustrations by Charles Vess.[8](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-ladies-of-grace-adieu-by-susanna-clarke-6230961.html) • [11](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/flitting-into-the-world-of-faerie-1.1018912) Only one of the eight pieces had not been published elsewhere.[8](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-ladies-of-grace-adieu-by-susanna-clarke-6230961.html)
## Piranesi
Clarke's second novel, *Piranesi* (2020), is a much shorter book about a man who lives alone in an infinite House of halls and statues, keeping a diary whose entries give the novel its structure; the strength of the book lies in his narrative voice and his contentment with the little he has.[12](https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/history-and-fantasy-the-novels-of-susanna-clarke/) The seed of the novel was sown years earlier, when Clarke in her twenties took an evening class on the stories of [Jorge Luis Borges](https://www.edgepedia.org/jorge-luis-borges) in east London; after finishing the book she reread Borges's "The House of Asterion" and found details whose echoes in *Piranesi* she had no memory of absorbing.[3](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/11/susanna-clarke-id-really-ceased-to-think-of-myself-as-a-writer) • [13](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/03/susanna-clarke-neil-gaimans-the-sandman-taught-me-to-be-courageous-in-writing) *Piranesi* won the [Women's Prize for Fiction](https://www.edgepedia.org/womens-prize-for-fiction) in 2021.[3](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/11/susanna-clarke-id-really-ceased-to-think-of-myself-as-a-writer)
## Style and critical standing
Clarke's fiction blends fantasy with historical fiction, and critics have placed her in a literary tradition of English fantasy rather than in genre categories that fit neatly on a spine.[11](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/flitting-into-the-world-of-faerie-1.1018912) • [14](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-beauty-of-the-house-on-susanna-clarkes-piranesi) Academic commentary has read *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell* as historical fantasy that estranges the English past, and as a radical, anti-hegemonic vision whose historical setting tends to mask its intentions.[15](https://thesis.sdu.dk/download?id=1975) • [16](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/4/125) The novelist [Neil Gaiman](https://www.edgepedia.org/neil-gaiman), a friend of Clarke and her husband, the novelist and critic Colin Greenland, has called her his favorite living fantasy writer.[17](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/susanna-clarkes-fantasy-world-of-interiors) Her own stated influences include [C. S. Lewis](https://www.edgepedia.org/c-s-lewis)'s Narnia series and [Ursula K. Le Guin](https://www.edgepedia.org/ursula-k-le-guin)'s original Earthsea trilogy, and she has credited Charles Palliser's *The Quincunx* with teaching her that a novelist could write a 19th-century novel on purpose.[13](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/03/susanna-clarke-neil-gaimans-the-sandman-taught-me-to-be-courageous-in-writing)
## References
1. [Susanna Clarke, Store norske leksikon (Marit Sjelmo, NTNU)](https://snl.no/Susanna_Clarke)
2. [Susanna Clarke, Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) author page](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/susanna-clarke/)
3. [Susanna Clarke: 'I'd really ceased to think of myself as a writer', The Guardian (2021)](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/11/susanna-clarke-id-really-ceased-to-think-of-myself-as-a-writer)
4. [Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell reading group guide, Bloomsbury](https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell-reading-group-guide.pdf)
5. [Susanna Clarke, The Lantern Hall](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/susanna-clarke/)
6. [Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, review, The Independent (2004)](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/jonathan-strange-amp-mr-norrell-by-susanna-clarke-755188.html)
7. [Susanna Clarke, The Booker Prizes](https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/authors/susanna-clarke)
8. [The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke, review, The Independent (2006)](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-ladies-of-grace-adieu-by-susanna-clarke-6230961.html)
9. [Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Brings the Old-Time Magic, Time (2015)](https://time.com/3915949/review-jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell/)
10. [Clarke, Susanna 1959-, Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/clarke-susanna-1959)
11. [Flitting into the world of Faerie, The Irish Times (2006)](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/flitting-into-the-world-of-faerie-1.1018912)
12. [History and fantasy – the novels of Susanna Clarke, The Bubble](https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/history-and-fantasy-the-novels-of-susanna-clarke/)
13. [Susanna Clarke: 'Neil Gaiman's The Sandman taught me to be courageous in writing', The Guardian (2021)](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/03/susanna-clarke-neil-gaimans-the-sandman-taught-me-to-be-courageous-in-writing)
14. [The Beauty of the House: On Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi", Los Angeles Review of Books](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-beauty-of-the-house-on-susanna-clarkes-piranesi)
15. [On Class in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, University of Southern Denmark thesis](https://thesis.sdu.dk/download?id=1975)
16. [Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Magic of Sociality, and Radical Fantasy, Humanities (MDPI)](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/4/125)
17. [Susanna Clarke's Fantasy World of Interiors, The New Yorker (2020)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/susanna-clarkes-fantasy-world-of-interiors)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Writers and literary biographies › Fiction writers: novelists and genre › Science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers › Fantasy writers*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license