On June 26, 1997, the story of a bespectacled young boy, living with his unloving aunt, uncle and cousin because his parents are dead, hit bookshelves. He was called Harry Potter and he, and his creator, became part of literary history.
wenty five years on, six successive books, Hollywood blockbuster films starring Hollywood icons, a West End play and merchandise tie-ins, (a Bertie Bott every flavour bean, anyone?) the world of Harry Potter isn’t so much global but stratospheric.
Much like where the young wizard lived in Privet Drive (in the cupboard under the stairs), the book’s beginnings were humble. Written between approximately 1990 and 1995, the boy who lived came fully formed into author JK Rowling’s mind as she travelled via train to London.
“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,” she said in a 2009 interview.
When Rowling’s mother died aged just 45, the wannabe writer wanted to get away from everything, taking a job teaching English in Portugal.
“My feelings about Harry Potter’s parents’ death became more real to me, and more emotional,” she said in the same interview.
Returning to the UK, she’d work in a café while young daughter Jessica slept, then wrote every evening, before typing it out afterwards. This was not a glamorous writing life.
“Sometimes I hated the book, and all the while I still loved it,” she said in 2009.
Publisher Bloomsbury released approximately 500 hardback copies in 1997, 300 of which headed to libraries.
By December 2021, the first book in the series had sold in excess of 120 million copies. It has been translated into over 80 languages including Lowland Scots, Irish, Latin and Ancient Greek.
Initial reviews were positive. The Guardian dubbed it ‘a richly textured first novel given lift-off by an inventive wit’. The Glasgow Herald said it had ‘yet to find a child who can put it down’. Similarities to Roald Dahl were made.
Much like young readers take literary inspiration from #BookTok in 2022, in the late 1990s, it was word of mouth that has much to do with the boy wizard’s success. It was a relative literary slow burn but one that paid off, given its silver anniversary.
“The booksellers would hand sell it, then the fans who would take it around the playground and talk about how wonderful it was to their friends and it built from there,” says John Bittles, who looks after the children’s books in No Alibis Bookshop.
John worked in a London bookshop during the height of Harry Potter fever, around the publication of the third and fourth novels.
“You had to sign a disclaimer that you wouldn’t open the boxes with the books until midnight of the time it was going on sale,” he says.
“You would have a midnight opening with people queuing around the block, all dressed up as Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore. There’d be a really nice atmosphere. We’d bring around drinks, sweets and then we’d open the door a couple of minutes to midnight.
“We’d all have the countdown, standing there with the Stanley knives ready to open those first boxes. People were coming in, grabbing the books, paying for them and hugging them — adults as well. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen again, quite a wonderful experience.”
Describing the build of excitement as ‘almost cultish,’ John says the beauty of the series comes with young readers only discovering it, some opting for an audiobook listen instead of music while travelling.
“The books still hold up,” says John. “You can see the influences, Malory Towers and [author] Diana Wynne Jones. Everything has influences but it’s how you use those influences.
“I think she managed to combine boarding school with the magic and that feeling of being a little bit out of place and managed to relate to a lot of people which is an amazing skill to have.
“As a bookseller beforehand with children’s books you didn’t get that many pre-orders.
“Books would come out, people would hear about them and then there would be a trickle [into the shop], whereas with Harry Potter, especially from the fifth book on, you’d get hundreds of pre-orders. Everyone wanted to know they’d get their copy before it disappeared.”
The vivid depictions of Diagon Alley, of Harry choosing his own wand (or it choosing him) and the wonders of Quidditch cast a spell over readers and encouraged them not to just finish the series but keep reading.
“Lots of those kids who started out with Harry Potter went on and read so much other stuff,” says John.
“It really brought on a joy of reading to a whole generation of childhood that then went onto into adulthood.
“It holds you in good stead for the rest of your life,” he continues. “I see the teenagers now coming in. They’re on their phones and looking at #BookTok and what other people have recommended and then they’re going to the shelf to find those.”
Though beloved to so many wizard fans, several of Rowling’s real life comments have been significantly more controversial than her Hogwarts-based plotlines.
Allegations of transphobia, problematic tweets and being described as an author who failed Harry Potter readers — the series having, at its heart, the belief that difference is a very good thing —have left some readers questioning their once favourite writer.
To dismiss her novels after having such a formative role in many readers’ childhood and adolescence is problematic in itself.
It makes it difficult to separate the art from the creator but there’s no doubt as to the continued popularity of the first book in a series that, however temporarily, made many readers feel less alone.
No doubt many will celebrate the Philosopher’s Stone’s special anniversary. But in 25 years’ time, will a Belfast Telegraph journalist be writing an article on the book’s 50th anniversary?
“Yes, I do think so,” says John from No Alibis. “It really touched a nerve. It has stayed on the shelf. I always keep a few copies of each one because, even though it’s quite old now, it sells so quickly. If you think of the Dan Brown phenomenon, the 50 Shades, Twilight, they don’t sell anywhere near as much, maybe one copy a month. The Harry Potters still sell pretty much every day.”
