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Development, publication and reception

Development

In 1990 Jo Rowling, as she preferred to be known,^[13] wanted to move with her boyfriend to a flat in Manchester and in her words, "One weekend after flat hunting, I took the train back to London on my own and the idea for Harry Potter fell into my head... A scrawny, little, black-haired, bespectacled boy became more and more of a wizard to me... I began to write Philosopher's Stone that very evening. Although, the first couple of pages look nothing like the finished product."^[8] Then Rowling's mother died and, to cope with her pain, Rowling transferred her own anguish to the orphan Harry.^[8] Rowling spent six years working on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and in 1996 obtained a grant of £4,000 from the Scottish Arts Council, which enabled her to finish the book and plan the sequels.^[14] She sent the book to an agent and a publisher, and then the second agent she approached spent a year trying to sell the book to publishers, most of whom thought it was too long at about 90,000 words. Barry Cunningham, who was building a portfolio of distinctive fantasies by new authors for Bloomsbury Children's Books, recommended accepting the book,^[14] and the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chief executive said it was "so much better than anything else."^[15]

UK publication and reception

Bloomsbury accepted the book, paying Rowling a £2,500 advance,^[16] and Cunningham sent proof copies to carefully-chosen authors, critics and booksellers in order to obtain comments that could be quoted when the book was launched.^[14] He was less concerned about the book's length than about its author's name, as the title sounded like a boys' book and boys prefer books by male authors. Rowling therefore adopted the nom de plume J.K. Rowling just before publication.^[14] In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print-run of 500 copies in hardback, three hundred of which were distributed to libraries.^[17] The short initial print run was standard for first novels, and Cunningham hoped booksellers would read the book and recommend it to customers.^[14]

Lindsey Fraser, who had supplied one of the blurb comments,^[14] wrote what is thought to be the first published review, in The Scotsman on 28 June 1997. She described Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as "a hugely entertaining thriller" and Rowling as "a first-rate writer for children".^[14][18] Another early review, in The Herald, said, "I have yet to find a child who can put it down." Newspapers outside Scotland started to notice the book, with glowing reviews in The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Mail on Sunday, and in September 1997 Books for Keeps, a magazine that specialised in children's books, gave the novel four stars out of five.^[14] In 1997 the UK edition won a National Book Award and a gold medal in the 9 to 11 year-olds category of the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize.^[19] The Smarties award, which is voted for by children, made the book well-known within six months of publication, while most children's books have to wait for years.^[14]

The following year, Philosopher's Stone won almost all the other major UK awards that were decided by children.^[14][20] It was also shortlisted for children's books awards adjudicated by adults,^[21] but did not win. Sandra Beckett comments that books which were popular with children were regarded as undemanding and as not of the highest literary standards – for example the literary establishment disdained the works of Roald Dahl, an overwhelming favourite of children before the appearance of Rowling's books.^[22]

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone won two publishing industry awards given for sales rather than literary merit, the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year and the Booksellers' Association / Bookseller Author of the Year.^[14] By March 1999 UK editions had sold just over 300,000 copies,^[23] and the story was still the UK's best-selling title in December 2001.^[24] A Braille edition was published in May 1998 by the Scottish Braille Press.^[25]

Platform 9¾, from which the Hogwarts Express left London, was commemorated in the real-life King's Cross railway station with a sign between tracks 9 and 10 and a trolley apparently passing through the wall.^[26]

USA publication and reception

Scholastic Corporation bought the USA rights at the Bologna Book Fair in April 1997 for US$105,000, an unusually high sum for a children's book.^[14] They thought that a child would not want to read a book with the word "philosopher" in the title and,^[29] after some discussion, the American edition was published in October 1998 under the title Rowling suggested, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.^[14][30] Rowling claimed that she regretted this change and would have fought it if she had been in a stronger position at the time.^[31] Philip Nel has pointed out that the change lost the connection with alchemy, and the meaning of some other terms changed in translation, for example from UK English "muffin" to US English "crumpet". While Rowling accepted the change from both standard UK English "mum" and Seamus Finnegan's Irish variant "mam" to "mom" in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, she vetoed this change in the later books. However Nel considered that Scholastic's translations were considerably more sensitive than most of those imposed on UK English books of the time, and that some other changes could be regarded as useful copyedits.^[27] Since the UK editions of early titles in the series were published a few months earlier than the American versions, some American readers became familiar with the British English versions after buying them via the Internet.^[32]

At first the most prestigious reviewers ignored the book, leaving it to book trade and library publications such as Kirkus Reviews and Booklist, which examined it only by the entertainment-oriented criteria of children's fiction. However more penetrating specialist reviews, such as one by Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices, which pointed out the complexity, depth and consistency of the world Rowling had built, attracted the attention of reviewers in major newspapers.^[33] Although The Boston Globe and Michael Winerip in The New York Times complained that the final chapters were the weakest part of the book^[18][34] they and most other American reviewers gave glowing praise.^[14][18] A year later the US edition was selected as an American Library Association Notable Book, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998, and a New York Public Library 1998 Best Book of the Year, and won Parenting Magazine's Book of the Year Award for 1998,^[19] the School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults.^[14]

In August 1999 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone topped the New York Times list of best-selling fiction,^[35] and stayed near the top of the list for much of 1999 and 2000, until the New York Times split its list into children's and adult sections under pressure from other publishers who were eager to see their books given higher placings.^[22][33] Publishers Weekly's report in December 2001 on cumulative sales of children's fiction placed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 19th among hardbacks (over 5 million copies) and 7th among paperbacks (over 6.6 million copies).^[36]

In May 2008, Scholastic announced the creation of a 10th Anniversary Edition of the book to be released in September 2008 to mark the tenth anniversary of the original American release.^[37]

Translations

By mid-2008 official translations of the book were published in 67 languages.^[38][39] Bloomsbury have published translations in Latin and in Ancient Greek,^[40][41] and the latter was described as "one of the most important pieces of Ancient Greek prose written in many centuries".^[42]

Sequels

The second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was originally published in the UK on 2 July 1998 and in the US on 2 June 1999.^[43][44] Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was then published a year later in the UK on 8 July 1999 and in the US on 8 September 1999.^[43][44] Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published on 8 July 2000 at the same time by Bloomsbury and Scholastic.^[45] Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the longest book in the series at 766 pages in the UK version and 870 pages in the US version.^[46] It was published worldwide in English on 21 June 2003.^[47] Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was published on 16 July 2005, and sold 11 million copies in the first 24 hours of its worldwide release.^[48][49] The seventh and final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was published 21 July 2007.^[50] The book sold 11 million copies within 24 hours of its release: 2.7 million copies in the UK and 8.3 million in the US.^[51]

Film version

In 1999, Rowling sold the film rights of the first four Harry Potter books to Warner Bros. for a reported £1 million ($1,982,900).^[52] Rowling demanded that the principal cast be kept strictly British, but allowed for the casting of Irish actors such as the late Richard Harris as Dumbledore, and of foreign actors as characters of the same nationalities in later books.^[53] After extensive casting,^[54] filming began in October 2000 at Leavesden Film Studios and in London, with production ending in July 2001.^[55] Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 14 November, 2001.^[56] Reviewers' comments were positive, as reflected by a 78% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes,^[57] and by a score of 64% at Metacritic representing "generally favorable reviews".^[58]

Video games

Video games loosely based on the book were released between 2001 and 2003, generally under the American title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Most were published by Electronic Arts but produced by different developers: