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

Isabel Zosig

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9783638268363
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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 arabbit named Rabbit, who had the measles and was visited by his friends. Amongstthem was a little bee called Miss Bee.However, she never told anyone about her "burning ambition"3 to become awriter, 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 ExeterUniversity, Joanne Rowling started to work as a research asssistant at AmnestyInternational which was a "very, very interesting place to work"6, but at the same time ahuge mistake, because Joanne Rowling admits that as a secretary she would beanybody's "worst nightmare"7.It was during a delayed train journey from Manchester to King's Cross Station inLondon, when she was obviously hit by magic. The story about a little orphan namedHarry Potter, who has to live with his old-fashioned relatives and finds out that he is awizard, came to her mind. And because she had no pen or notebook with her, she had tothink it. So, Hogwarts - School of Witchcraft and Wizardry came to life in herimagination, and as she invented it, it "felt like research"8. "It was a question ofdiscovery why Harry was where he was, why his parents were dead"9. At the end of thejourney 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, gotdivorced and moved back to Britain, she continued writing the first book of the seriesHarry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (HP1)11 which she finished in 1995.2 see Picture 13 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