Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

“Get me a house that says to those that visit it that magic is a respectable profession – no less than Law and a great deal more so than Medicine.”

And being a man – and a clever one – and forty-two years old, he naturally had a great deal of information and a great many opinions upon almost every subject you care to mention, which he was eager to communicate to a lovely woman of nineteen – all of which, he thought, she could not fail but to find quite enthralling.