Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke
Clarke in 2006
Clarke in 2006
BornSusanna Mary Clarke
(1959-11-01) 1 November 1959 (age 65)
Nottingham, England
OccupationNovelist
EducationSt. Hilda's College, Oxford
GenreFantasy, alternate history
Notable worksJonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
Piranesi
PartnerColin Greenland

Susanna Mary Clarke (born 1 November 1959) is an English author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), 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.

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.[1]

  1. ^ Susanna Clarke And Alan Moore In Conversation at British Library, retrieved 11 January 2024