The Phenomenon Harry Potter
The Secret of its success

von: Isabel Zosig

Contents

1 Joanne K. Rowling – The Creator of Harry Potter 4

2.1 Publishing History of the Harry Potter Series 5
2.2 A Cinderella Story 6

2.2.1 Joanne’s Story 6
2.2.2 Harry’s Story 6

2.3 Central Themes of Harry Potter 7

2.3.1 Good vs. Evil 7
2.3.2 Growing-Up 8

2.4 The Internet 9
2.5 Commercialisation 10
2.6 Voices against Harry Potter 11

2.6.1 Christian Fundamentalists and the FFL 11
2.6.2 Plagiarism? 12

3 Conclusion 13

4 Reading List 14

5 Pictures 16

1 Joanne K. Rowling – The Creator of Harry Potter

At the age of six, Joanne Kathleen Rowling2 wrote her first short story about a rabbit named Rabbit, who had the measles and was visited by his friends. Amongst them was a little bee called Miss Bee. However, she never told anyone about her “burning ambition”3 to become a writer, not even Ms Shephard, her English teacher at Wyedean Comprehensive School. Ms Shephard was a great influence on young Joanne as “she inspired trust”4. Shephard’s comments on Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone “meant more to [Joanne Rowling] than any newspaper reviews”5.

After finishing secondary school and her studies in French and Classics at Exeter University, Joanne Rowling started to work as a research asssistant at Amnesty International which was a “very, very interesting place to work”6, but at the same time a huge mistake, because Joanne Rowling admits that as a secretary she would be anybody’s “worst nightmare”7.

It was during a delayed train journey from Manchester to King’s Cross Station in London, when she was obviously hit by magic. The story about a little orphan named Harry Potter, who has to live with his old-fashioned relatives and finds out that he is a wizard, came to her mind. And because she had no pen or notebook with her, she had to think it. So, Hogwarts - School of Witchcraft and Wizardry came to life in her imagination, and as she invented it, it “felt like research”8. “It was a question of discovery why Harry was where he was, why his parents were dead”9. At the end of the journey she knew “it was going to be a seven-book series”10. The next five years, while she moved to Portugal, got married, had a baby, got divorced and moved back to Britain, she continued writing the first book of the series Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (HP1)11 which she finished in 1995.

2.1 Publishing History of the Harry Potter Series

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2 see Picture 1
3 Lindsey Fraser, Conversations with J.K. Rowling, New York 2001, p.22.
4 ibid, p. 19.
5 ibid, p. 19.
6 ibid, p. 36.
7 ibid, p. 35.
8 ibid, p. 39.
9 ibid, p. 39.
10 ibid, pp. 39.
11 see Picture 2