Susanna Clarke English writer Date of Birth: 16.11.1959 Country: Great Britain

Biography of Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke is an English writer and the author of the award-winning novel "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." She was born on November 16, 1959, in Nottingham, United Kingdom, into a family of Methodist preachers. Due to her father's profession, Clarke had a nomadic childhood, living in various cities in Northern England and Scotland.

Clarke obtained a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from St Hilda's College, Oxford University. After graduating, she worked in different publishing houses, including Gordon Fraser and Quarto. In 1990, Clarke moved to Turin, Italy, where she taught English to employees at the Fiat factory. A year later, she taught English in Bilbao, Spain, where the idea of writing a detective novel came to her, although she never completed it.

In 1992, Susanna Clarke returned to England and spent some time in County Durham, where she lived in a house overlooking the North Sea. A period of illness and her reading of "The Lord of the Rings" inspired Clarke to write her own work. She began writing the novel "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell," which took her ten years to complete.

From 1993 to 2003, Clarke worked as an editor at the Cambridge office of Simon and Schuster, focusing on publishing culinary books. In October 2004, "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" was published by Bloomsbury. The first edition was a beautiful volume with 782 pages, including 185 footnotes and stunning illustrations by Portia Rosenberg. The novel became an instant publishing sensation, selling approximately 750,000 copies in the first two months in the United Kingdom.

One reviewer described Clarke's work as an equal blend of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, with a touch of Rowling and Tolkien. The book was adapted into a film, and its production is expected to be completed in 2010.

In addition to her novel, Susanna Clarke is also the author of short stories that continue the themes of her book. She currently resides in Cambridge with her partner, science fiction writer and critic Colin Greenland (born 1954).