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
everybody exactly
I always start out saying exactly what everybody looks like. I don't know why.
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.
austen jane trying
I tell stories. I kind of stumbled on that by trying to combine Jane Austen and magic.
comics convey dominated moore since
It's not easy to convey to someone who doesn't read comics just how Alan Moore has dominated the field since 'Watchmen.'
century home inclined
I feel very much at home in the early nineteenth century and am not inclined to leave it.
except full liked people rooms
I always really liked magicians. I'm not even sure why - except that they know things other people don't, and they live in untidy rooms full of strange objects.
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.
turned
In some ways, 'Mansfield Park' is 'Pride and Prejudice' turned inside out.
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.
convincing magicians
In 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,' I wanted to create the most convincing story of magic and magicians that I could.
compared jane tale
'Pride and Prejudice' is often compared to 'Cinderella,' but Jane Austen's real 'Cinderella' tale is 'Mansfield Park.'
led people stories
I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.
lose possible series stretch tv
The phone conversations about a possible TV series of 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell' stretch back years, but now that the moment has come, now that I am actually here at Wentworth Woodhouse, I lose my bearings.
becomes english feeling german irish nature pin possible scottish welsh
You can get this feeling of the English or Scottish or Irish or Welsh fairy, but it is by nature very elusive. It would be possible to pin down a German fairy, but the English one just vanishes, becomes the shadow under the trees.