First-time novelist weaves £1m magic (original) (raw)

Watch and learn, Harry Potter, and stand by for some serious magic. The company that championed the schoolboy wizard is about to launch one of the biggest marketing campaigns in publishing history for its new international blockbuster - but this time it's magic for grown-ups.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by first-time novelist Susanna Clarke, is an 800-page epic about the rivalry between the last two magicians in England, set during the Napoleonic wars and featuring real-life characters including Lord Byron and the Duke of Wellington. Its combination of historical wit and spellbound fantasy has prompted comparisons with Jane Austen and Philip Pullman.

Bloomsbury, the publishing house that hit the multi-million-pound jackpot with J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, bought the rights a year ago and is planning a publicity onslaught involving everything from newspaper serialisations to deliveries by horse and carriage.

Clarke, 43, the daughter of a Methodist minister, began the novel 10 years ago, well before Rowling, Pullman and company made magic the new must-read. She has spent most of her career publishing other people's books, most recently editing cookbooks by chefs including Antony Worrall Thompson.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which has already been sold to a dozen countries and attracted interest from Hollywood, looks set to make her a millionaire and has enabled her to quit the day job to become a full-time writer.

Alexandra Pringle, editor-in-chief at Bloomsbury, said: 'We have our small magician who's worked wonders; now we'll have grown-up magicians. At first my heart sank at the sight of such a big book, but it is an incredibly funny adventure, erudite and utterly compelling. What's amazing is how she's worked out a world that's so full and vibrant.

'It is funny in a sly Jane Austen way and very literary with elements of fantasy - Jane Austen meets Philip Pullman is a fair way to describe it. There is definitely a film in it and we've already had a lot of interest in the film rights.'

Such is industry confidence in the book that publishing rights have been sold to 12 countries, including Brazil, South Korea and Thailand, for simultaneous worldwide publication on 4 October, making it an early favourite to top the Christmas bestseller list. Bloomsbury itself will target the lucrative US market and plans themed teasers in the countdown to publication, including period stationery and mock newspapers in coffee shops.

The story follows Mr Norrell, a reclusive magician who is called up to help the war effort against Napoleon. While in London he meets the brilliant young magician Jonathan Strange and takes him on as a pupil. Together they dazzle the country with their feats, but then become rivals.

Clarke, who lives with the science fiction writer Colin Greenland in Cambridge, said: 'I have a fascination with magicians. I always liked them in the books I read by authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien - the Narnia Chronicles were my favourite as a child. I spent years trying and failing to write a detective novel, but I loved Jane Austen and that world, so it seemed a good period in which to set this one.

'It is an adult, not a children's, book. I had difficulty describing it to people when I had to boil it down to two or three sentences. Byron and the Duke of Wellington come into it. The more I read about Wellington the more I realised what an amazing person he was - you could not make him up.'