7 Meaning Venice: Altinum was the city on Italy’s eastern coast whence came the first inhabitants of Venice.

56 The Black Tower

1 German for magician.

2 A somewhat poetical name for fairies.

3 Lord Byron is speaking of Great Britain.

4 See Byron’s letter to Augusta Leigh, October 28th, 1816.

57 The Black Letters

1 Strange’s later Venetian letters (in particular his letters to Henry Woodhope) have been known by this name since their publication in London in January 1817. Lawyers and magical scholars will doubtless continue to argue over whether or not the publication was legal. Certainly Strange never gave his permission and Henry Woodhope has always maintained that neither did he. Henry Woodhope also said that the published letters had been altered and added to, presumably by Henry Lascelles and Gilbert Norrell. In his The Life of Jonathan Strange John Segundus published what he and Woodhope claimed were the originals. It is these versions which are reprinted here.

2 This letter has never been found. It is probable that Strange never sent it. According to Lord Byron (letter to John Murray, Dec. 31st, 1816.) Strange would often write long letters to his friends and then destroy them. Strange confessed to Byron that he quickly became confused as to which he had and had not sent.

3 Byron died of a chill five years later in Greece.

59 Leucrocuta, the Wolf of the Evening

1 The prison where Drawlight was imprisoned for debt in November 1814.

61 Tree speaks to Stone; Stone speaks to Water

1 See Chapter 3, footnote 1.

2 Restoration and Rectification was a spell which reversed the effects of a recent calamity.

3 Teilo’s Hand was an ancient fairy spell which halted all sorts of things: rain, fire, wind, coursing water or blood. It presumably was named after the fairy who had first taught it to an English magician.

4 Chauntlucet: a mysterious and ancient spell which encourages the moon to sing. The song the moon knows is apparently very beautiful and can cure leprosy or madness in any who hear it.

5 Daedalus’s Rose: a fairly complicated procedure devised by Martin Pale for preserving emotions, vices and virtues in amber or honey or beeswax. When the preserving medium is warmed, the imprisoned qualities are released. The Rose has – or rather had – a huge number of applications. It could be used to dispense courage to oneself or inflict cowardice on one’s enemy; it could provoke love, lust, nobility of purpose, anger, jealousy, ambition, self-sacrifice, etc., etc.

6 Like many spells with unusual names, the Unrobed Ladies was a great deal less exciting than it sounded. The ladies of the title were only a kind of woodland flower which was used in a spell to bind a fairy’s powers. The flower was required to be stripped of leaves and petals – hence the “unrobing”.

7 Stokesey’s Vitrification turns objects – and people – to glass.