Norrell, their power is something to be cautiously controlled, while Jonathan Strange will always be attracted to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic.

But it soon becomes clear that their ideas of what English magic ought to be are very different. Astonished to find another practicing magician, Mr. Strange thinks nothing of enduring the rigors of campaigning with Wellington's army and doing magic on battlefields.

Jonathan Strange is handsome, charming, and talkative, the very opposite of Mr. Soon he is lending his help to the government in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte, creating ghostly fleets of rain-ships to confuse and alarm the French.Īll goes well until a rival magician appears. He goes to London and raises a beautiful young woman from the dead. Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England's magical past and regained some of the powers of England's magicians. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.īut at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. And their own obsessions and secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call they could command winds, mountains, and woods. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms the one between England and France. Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very opposite of Norrell. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange.

Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation's past. The first shall fear me the second shall long to behold me.

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