The Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Podcast

On this most romantic of days, Sarah talks with Kristin about Romantic art and how it relates to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Then Sarah and Sam read the latest of the Agony Uncle column!

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The Agony Uncle column is written by @mrsbillycranston

Mentioned in the podcast, in order:

• Charles Baudelaire
  
• Waterhouse & Millais, Pre-Raphaelite painters
  
• Jacques Louis David - Oath of the Horatii
  
• John Constable, JMW Turner, William Blake
  
• Diderot
  
• further reading on the sublime would be Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry and also ‘The Sublime Today: Contemporary Readings in the Aesthetic’ which has a chapter on the twin towers 
  
• Theodore Jericault quote about Raft of the Medusa
  
• Kristin’s blog: mrsbeefheart.blogspot.com
  
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
  
• artists and their works under the cut:
  

William Blake - Europe a Prophecy

JMW Turner - Steamer in a Snowstorm

John Constable, Haywain, 1821

Caspar David Friedrich - WANDERER ABOVE A SEA OF FOG

Goya - The Giant

Jerricault - Raft of the Medusa

• The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis

Caspar David Friedrich painting that looks like Lost Hope!:

For this short holiday episode Sarah teaches us how to bake seedcake and the Agony Uncles dispense some advice for social occasions..

Happy New Year everyone! May all your wishes come true ;)

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The Agony Uncle column is written by @mrsbillycranston, read by @notjustanoxymoron​.

Sarah’s seedcake recipe:

Mix a quarter of a peck of flour with half a pound of sugar, a quarter of an ounce of allspice, and a little ginger. Melt three quarters of a pound of butter with half a pint of milk; when just warm, put to it a quarter of a pint of yeast, and work it up to a good dough. Add seeds or currants, let it stand before the fire a few minutes before it goes to the oven, and bake it an hour and a half.
(a peck = 32 cups)

My conversion to normal human amounts, which is half quantities to the recipe above:

• 600g flour
  
• 225g sugar
  
• 1 tsp allspice
  
• ½ tsp ground ginger
  
• 170g butter
  
• 280ml milk
  
• 25g yeast
  
• Seeds and currants of your choice. However many you want depending on how seedy you want it
  

Mix up the dry ingredients: Flour, Sugar, Allspice and Ginger, along with as many seeds as you want.
Melt the butter, add the milk to this, heat until ‘hand hot’ (pretty warm, but you can still comfortably dip your finger in and leave it there), then stir in the yeast.
Add this to the dry ingredients and work up to a good dough

Leave to stand for a few minutes in a warm place before baking.
Bake it an hour and a quarter at 180C.

From The Cook and Housekeeper’s Complete and Universal Dictionary

In this episode we talk about the magic of the book and series with the help of some fantastic submissions from listeners. We chat about magic generally a little, then there’s parts about magical systems in fiction, some faery lore, tarot, as well as the usual agony column!

[LISTEN]

The Agony Uncle column is written by @mrsbillycranston, read by @notjustanoxymoron​.

The submission about magical systems is by @notjustanoxymoron.

The notes on faerie lore were provided by @onstraysod and if you’d like to know more here are some recommended resources:

At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Nymphs, and Other Troublesome Things - Diane Purkiss - a really excellent book, it might have been published outside the U.S. under a different title, possible “Troublesome Things” ?

The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries - W. Y. Evans-Wentz
Online at: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/ A study of faery beliefs in Ireland, Wales,
Scotland, Brittany, etc. up into the 20th century

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies - Rev. Robert Kirk
Online at: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/sce/index.htm

The Faery Folklorist: fantastic blog about faery sites and legends around the UK
http://faeryfolklorist.blogspot.com

The recording on tarot is by @wraithwitch.

And finally, the outro music is ‘The Magician in York’ by @errandofmercy!

Also we apologise for mispronouncing Gerlinde’s tumblr handle; it’s @mymascotsolvedyou, not mymascotslovedyou. ;p

In this episode, we talk about the historic and fictional timelines of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell; how they correspond and how they deviate, as well as other interesting bits of history we came across.. 

(In other words, sometimes we ramble a bit)

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The Agony Uncle column is written by @mrsbillycranston!

In this introductory episode, we talk about what future podcast episodes will entail, introduce ourselves, and discuss your submissions of why you love the story so much!

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