Wizards by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2021-10-31T08:11:36+00:00

PART THREE

WIZARDS

OF

STORY

CHAPTER 7

The Wizards of Harry Potter

“You’re a wizard, Harry.”

—HAGRID, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE BY J.K. ROWLING

Of all wizards who are part of the popular imagination today, none has attracted more interest or excitement than a small, dark-haired boy with glasses and a strange lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin our investigation of wizards in popular literature and on screen with one whose fame has swept the globe: Harry Potter.

Few literary works have spawned such a web of influence as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Seven novels of ever-increasing page count and eight films of ever-increasing budgets released over thirteen years; multiple companion books, ancillary works and spin-offs, video games and merchandise, countless fan websites and wikis. Certainly, there are other fantasy works that use more words with longer publication timelines—Robert Jordan’s meandering Wheel of Time series comes to mind—but there’s something about Harry Potter that has grabbed our collective consciousness in a way that few things have before. Doubtless, Rowling’s creation will echo through the pop culture world of this century and beyond. Any book about wizards would be incomplete without a discussion of the Harry Potter phenomenon.

J.K. Rowling’s accomplishment is a type of wizardry in its own right. Harry Potter has become the best-selling book series in history, moving more that 400 million copies worldwide. The stories became the basis for a series of blockbuster movies that, in turn, became the highest-grossing film series in history. The change in Rowling’s own life was nothing short of magical. In the decade following the 1998 publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, (the original British title for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) she went from living on state benefits to amassing a fortune estimated at $798 million. She is the United Kingdom’s best-selling author with sales in excess of $398 million. In the year of publication of the final Harry Potter book, TIME magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, and the National Magazine Company named her “Most Influential Woman in Britain” in 2010. To say the Potter franchise was a success for Rowling is something of an understatement.

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