Paperback, 856 pages
English language
Published Oct. 29, 2005 by Bloomsbury.
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.
If you like the first page, you'll love the whole book. Undeniably a new cozy "comfort read" for me, with a permanent place on my bookshelf.
As a slow reader I felt like my nightly visits over several months were whisking me off to some mystical land.
