USA TODAY International Edition
20 FUN FACTS ABOUT HARRY POTTER
It’s hard to believe, but 20 years ago, the world of wizardry, magic and Muggles was unveiled to American audiences with the 1998 publication of J.K. Rowling’s young-adult fantasy “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” (A year earlier, the novel had been released in Great Britain as “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”) A spell was cast and a pop-culture phenomenon born, with midnight bookstore parties packed with fans greeting each new book. And then came the (eight) movies, which brought to visual life Diagon Alley, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, the Death Eaters and Lord Voldemort’s terrifying nose (thanks, Ralph Fiennes!) and which were blockbusters, too. ❚ With an eye toward a new generation of readers, U.S. publisher Scholastic is reissuing all seven Harry Potter books Tuesday with new cover illustrations by Brian Selznick (“The Invention of Hugo Cabret”). To mark the 20th anniversary, USA TODAY conjures 20 fun facts about the heroic boy wizard and the woman who created him.
1numbers: Let’s start with some mind-boggling The series has sold 500 million copies worldwide, 180 million in the U.S. alone. 2printing The first hardcover of “Sorcerer’s Stone” by Scholastic in September 1998 was 50,000 copies. Got a first edition? Biblio is selling one (unsigned) for $2,500. (Much more expensive and coveted by collectors: “Philosopher’s Stone,” of which only 500 copies were printed in 1997.) The seven books (not counting spe3cial editions or box sets) have spent a combined 1,739 weeks on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list, with “Sorcerer’s Stone” logging the most at 481 weeks. Each book hit No. 1. Rowling’s British publisher suggest4ed Harry’s creator use the name J.K Rowling so boy readers wouldn’t know she was a woman. (Her full name is Joanne Rowling, and she goes by Jo.) The British author went from strug5gling
single mother to exceedingly rich and famous megastar (though one notoriously private about her fortune): In 2016, James B. Stewart in The New York Times estimated her worth at $1.2 billion. 6cast
Daniel Radcliffe was 11 when he was
as Harry Potter in the movies. (He’s now 28.) Harry, an orphan living with his horrid relatives the Dursleys, finds out on his 11th birthday that he is a wizard when he receives a letter saying he has been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. 7Granger,
Rowling has said that Hermione know-it-all and indispensable
friend to Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, was inspired by Jo when she was a girl. 8
Mary GrandPre, who illustrated the original book jackets, based her drawing of bespectacled Harry on herself.
When placed side-by-side, Selz9nick’s seven new black-and-white jackets form a single image spanning Harry’s complete journey. Fans can examine Selznick’s covers for such Potter talismans as Hermione’s time-turner; Harry’s owl, Hedwig; the white doe Patronus; and Nagini, Voldemort’s snake.
Selznick based his drawing of Al10bus Dumbledore on Michelangelo’s Moses and a self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. Veronica Lake inspired Selznick’s vision of Fleur Delacour. 11and Potter fans delight in the names terms that help make the wizarding world so much fun. Among Rowling’s inventions: Quidditch, for the broomstick-flying soccer-like game at
which Harry excels, and Horcrux, objects that play a crucial role (the crux?) in the final battle between Harry and his evil nemesis, Voldemort, who murdered his parents. 12The Not everybody loved Harry Potter: novels often topped the American Library Association’s list of “Most Challenged Books” from those who thought they promoted witchcraft. 13Harry
Spoiler alert: Voldemort reveals to
that his real name, Tom Marvolo Riddle, is an anagram for “I am Lord Voldemort.”
After the third Potter book (“Pris14oner
of Azkaban”) was published, the Scholastic team had in-house code names for the Harry Potter books to keep them secret. With Book No. 7 (“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”), for example, Scholastic used MLK (because the manuscript arrived around Martin Luther King Jr. Day). 15in
While on a book tour in New York
2007 for “Deathly Hallows,” Rowling revealed that Dumbledore, Hogwarts’ headmaster and Harry’s mentor, was gay.
In April 2013, “The Cuckoo’s Call16ing,”
by an unknown mystery writer named Robert Galbraith, was published by Little, Brown. Despite good reviews, the detective novel sold fewer than 1,000 copies. When it was revealed (to her dismay) a few months later that Rowling was Galbraith, the novel shot to No. 1 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list. 17
Rowling’s wizarding world lives on in spinoffs such as theme parks, the movie sequel “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” (due in November) and Broadway’s “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which just won the Tony Award for best play. 18site Not to mention Pottermore, the that introduces new Rowling “Hogwarts” stories and where fans can dive deep into Potter trivia. 19Rowling
Not to mention Twitter, where regularly takes on President Donald Trump, Fox News and assorted (non-magical) trolls. 20
Book your ticket now: “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” opens Oct. 5 at the New-York Historical Society. The exhibit from the British Library, which includes everything from GrandPre’s original illustrations to costumes and set models from “Cursed Child,” runs through Jan. 27.