Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo, Venice
Oct. 27th, 1816.

Jonathan Strange to John Murray Oct. 27th, 1816.

… from eight separate persons of what Norrell has done. Oh, I could be angry. I could, I dare say, wear out both my pen and myself in a long tirade – but to what end? I do not chuse to be governed any longer by this impudent little man. I shall return to London in the early spring, as I planned, and we shall have a new edition. We shall have lawyers. I have my friends, just as he has his. Let him say in court (if he dares) why he thinks that Englishmen have become children and may not know the things that their forefathers knew. And if he dares to use magic against me again, then we shall have some counter-magic and then we shall finally see who is the Greatest Magician of the Age. And I think, Mr Murray, that you will be best advised to print a great many more copies than before – this has been one of Norrell’s most notorious acts of magic and I am sure that people will like to see the book that forced him to it. By the by when you print the new edition we shall have corrections – there are some horrible blunders. Chapters six and forty-two are particularly bad …

Harley-street, London
Oct. 1st, 1816.

Sir Walter Pole to Jonathan Strange

… a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard, Titus Watkins, has printed up a very nonsensical book and is selling it as Strange’s lost History and Practice of English Magic. Lord Portishead says some of it is copied out of Absalom¹ and some of it is nonsense. Portishead wonders which you will find the most insulting – the Absalom part or the nonsense. Like a good fellow, Portishead contradicts this imposition wherever he goes, but a great many people have already been taken in and Watkins has certainly made money. I am glad you like Miss Greysteel so much …

Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo, Venice
Nov. 16th., 1816.

Jonathan Strange to John Murray

My dear Murray,

You will be pleased, I think, to hear that some good at least has come from the destruction of The History and Practice of English Magic – I have made up my quarrel with Lord Byron. His lordship knows nothing of the great controversies which are rending English magic in two and frankly cares less. But he has the greatest respect for books. He informs me that he is constantly on guard lest your over-cautious pen, Mr Murray, should alter some of his own poems and render some of the more surprizing words a little more respectable. When he heard that a whole book had been magicked out of existence by the author’s enemy, his indignation was scarcely to be described. He sent me a long letter, vilifying Norrell in the liveliest terms. Of all the letters I received upon that sad occasion, this is my favourite. No Englishman alive can equal his lordship for an insult. He arrived in Venice about a week ago and we met at Florian’s.² I confess to being a little anxious lest he should bring that insolent young person, Mrs Clairmont, but happily she was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he dismissed her some time ago. Our new friendly relations have been sealed by the discovery that we share a fondness for billiards; I play when I am thinking about magic and he plays when he is hatching his poems … The sunlight was as cold and clear as the note struck by a knife on a fine wine-glass. In such a light the walls of the Church of Santa Maria Formosa were as white as shells or bones – and the shadows on the paving stones were as blue as the sea.