The Phenomenon "Harry Potter" - The Secret of its success

Isabel Zosig

Apr 2004 · GRIN Verlag

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Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), University of Bamberg (Centre for British Studies), course: Introdution to british media and communication science, language: English, abstract: 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 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