Book of Magic

There are two kinds of writings having for subject magic; there are books of magic and books about magic. This article will deal with the former sort.

It is often said that books of magic are those "written before magic ended in England", that is to say, that a book of magic is one written by a practicing magician, not a theoretical magician or a magio-historian. Unfortunately, that seemingly simple rule is insufficient. Magic began to fade quickly after the King left England, but one cannot say that magic was gone entirely. Many magicians from the Argentine period claimed to be able to do magic, and while some were unable to perform spells that worked, such as Gregory Absalom, others did have talent. Martin Pale, after all, lived long after the King left us, but his abilities as a magician were such that he is considered an Aureate. And even if Gregory Absalom performed no magic, his daughter, Maria, was clearly a remarkable magician.

Perhaps one way of distinguishing books of magic from the more common books about magic is not whether it was written by a practical magician, but whether a person with magical talent could use the information in the book to perform actual magic. For example, Jonathan Strange successfully adapts a spell he found in Paris Ormskirk's Revelations of Thirty-Six Other Worlds to summon Miss Absalom [23]. Indeed, this seems to one of the reasons for Gilbert Norrell's interest in buying up all the books of magic in England - namely, his fear that others may read them and decide to become magicians. When discussing the Duke of Roxburghe's library, he explains his worry that the heir to the duke might find a book of magic in the library and "find himself inspired to try a spell or two" [28].

Given that most Aureate magicians wrote very little (if anything—Thomas Godbless might have been illiterate), most books of magic therefore come from the Argentine period. Argentine magicians lived close enough to the Aureate period that they were able to gather and publish spells and other magical information, even if those spells often no longer worked (for most people) and the information was sometimes inaccurate. For example, Lanchester's Language of Birds is reported to have a "reconstruction of Stokesey's magic for calming stormy waters," about which Mr Norrell remarks, "I am not so foolish as to suppose that Lanchester greatly resembles Stokesey but he is the best we have" [35].

Books of magic have always been rare, and their value is "above rubies" [1]. They became even more rare in recent years when Mr Norrell began buying all of them that he could find. Indeed, by July 1809, Mr Strange is said to have reported that there was no copy of Lanchester's Language of Birds available anywhere, though five years earlier there had been four [23].

Mr Norrell was, famously, the most avid collector of such books in England, and his library at Hurtfew Abbey was filled with them. We may compare it to the fabulous dragon-hoards we hear of in legend - and Mr. Norrell unfortunately was as jealous as a dragon in guarding it from the eyes of others, even those of his pupil, Mr. Strange. Hurtfew was considered the finest magical library of its time, certainly one of the best to have ever been in England, and perhaps even the best. (As a comparison, most private libraries did not contain more than two or three books of magic - and these were very fine libraries belonging to members of the aristocracy and other rich gentlemen.) This explains why Jonathan Strange, when he returns to England wrapped in his Pillar of Darkness, chuses to appear first at Hurtfew. The abbey's wonderful library, with all its vast array of magical knowledge, is essential if he is to carry out his self-imposed task of freeing his wife from her enchantment.

Naturally such precious objects as true books of magic were strongly protected by the laws of England. The deliberate destruction of such a book was a heinous offence: 'book-murder' was classed as equal to the crime of slaying a Christian. Upon conviction the malefactor's penalty (as Vinculus' wretched father Clegg belatedly discovered) was invariably death.

The perspicacious reader will no doubt have considered that books of magic are akin to practical magic, more of which you can ascertain here.