I’m wrapping up my semester-long book history class and I think it’s time to do a deep dive into the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (1998-2007; US editions) and give them their place in book history. This series has been analyzed from many angles and a quick search the Academic Search Complete database for “Harry Potter” search brings up 5,413 results; 420 of those are in academic journals covering everything from library science to psychology to mathematics. Some fun article titles include Using Harry Potter to Introduce Students to DNA Fingerprinting & Forensic Science (Palmer, 2010); Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, and Animals: A Review of the Treatment of Nonhuman Animals and Other Sentient Beings in Christian-Based Fantasy Fiction (Morris, 2009); and Searching for the Harry Potter/ STEM Connection: Do You Need a 'Room of Requirement' in Your School? (Tassell, 2014). I’m going to go with yes, every school needs a Room of Requirement on that last title.
Interestingly, despite the thousands of search results and hundreds of scholarly papers focused on the Harry Potter series, when I searched for what work had been done in the realm of book history in the aptly named Book History journal, I got exactly 5 results, none of which really focused on the Harry Potter series or its author and one of which was about Charles Dickens and 19th century literature {er, I’m guessing maybe Dickens knew someone named Harry Potter…}. So, this means I have my work cut out for me as I use this mini series to convince you, dear readers (Brontë/Bell, 1847/2009), that the Harry Potter book series deserves a place among the ranks of other classics analyzed by book historians.
Now, the lack of results in one journal does not mean that Rowling’s popular series hasn’t been analyzed for aspects of book history such as its literary content, connections to history, importance in education, etc {there are too many titles to cite here}; it means that it these analyses have been isolated to the realms of literature studies, or science, or history, or education and not brought back to the book cycle <— that is what I will attempt to do. Let’s get started.
Image of a front end sheets of a book. The end sheet is red and attached to it are its old card catalog record and due date sheet from pre-digital times at SFPL.
What is book history?
This is a valid question. In very broad terms, book history is the history of books in all their forms and how they have impacted humanity. Of course, there is a lot that contained in that definition. The introduction to Robert Darnton’s {famous book historian’s} The Business of Enlightenment (1979) is titled” The Biography of a Book” and the word biography really gets at what book history is. A human biography would cover someone what made someone who they are/were: their parents, physical features, youth, early adult years, career, great achievements, reinvention, retirement, etc. Book history covers how a specific book format came to be, how the content developed, the production processes, the author that created it, various versions of said book, and its cultural impact. Darnton (1979) says that the questions a book historian asks “could be multiplied endlessly because books touched on such a vast range of human activity— everything from picking rags to transmitting the word of God. They were {are} products of artisanal labor, objects of economic exchange, vehicles of ideas, and elements in political and religious conflict” (p.1). So, book history is not just about the final physical object you dread packing when moving but also about paper makers and bookbinders and delivery drivers and bookseller or libraries, and readers.
All the aspects that books can be studied from, as my professor reminded me in an email, is called the book cycle; Darnton (1982) called it the communication circuit, showing each part of the cycle listed above as a cyclical route. Each and every aspect of book history relates to and overlaps with the others.
“By recounting the life story of the Encyclopédie, this book is meant to dispel some of the obscurity of books in general” (Darnton, 1979, back cover).
Darnton explains and examines the entire book cycle in The Business of Enlightenment by looking at a single series {Diderot’s Encyclopédie volumes} and I will employ the same method for the Harry Potter series. To modernize things a bit, I’m going to label my aspects of book history after the titles my professors Annette Lamb and Lydia Spotts (2021) used for our book history lectures: the book as artifact, author creation/work, intellectual property, commodity, knowledge, print culture, cultural icon {cue my Gryffindor tie}, and reader experience. I’ll explain it all when we get there, it’s going to be fun. Ready?
Image of the inside flap of the dust jacket from the first US printing of the hardcover edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1998).
Warning: here be spoilers!
Introducing Harry Potter
Did you read the warning? There are probably going be a lot of spoilers in this series. If you haven’t read the books or watched the movies, go ahead, take a few days, knock it out. Otherwise, given that the books are currently 24 years old, there’s been a incredibly popular movie series based on the books, and the characters continually appear in popular magazines to this day, I don’t feel too bad telling you the gift Harry receives from Mrs. Weasley is a hand-knit sweater with the letter H on it; among other things (Rowling, 1998).
Although he doesn’t know it at the start, Harry Potter is a famous wizard born to famous wizard parents who died tragically at the hands of the evil wizard Lord Voldemort (Rowling, 1998). Harry’s famous in the wizarding world because Voldemort couldn’t kill him as a baby; Harry is the “the boy who lived” (Rowling, 1998, p.1). Harry doesn’t grow up in the wizard world, he lives with his non-magic {muggle} aunt, uncle, and cousin in suburban England where he’s treated like shit and his room is a closet under the stairs. Then he turns eleven, a giant makes him a birthday cake and uses an umbrella to give cousin Dudley a pig tail and Harry receives his welcome letter to Hogwarts, the magical education school.
The series follows Harry, his best friends Ron and Hermione {her-my-oh-knee}, his enemies {there are a lot of them}, and his professor including venerable headmaster Albus Dumbledore through Harry’s seven-ish years of schooling. There are adventures, misadventures, a really boring history class taught by a ghost, more ghosts, and everything culminates in a battle against Lord Voldemort.
Since its first publication, the Harry Potter series has topped bestseller charts {and as of today is still listed as #22 on Amazon’s best seller list}, never left challenged or banned books lists {Business Insider listed it among other 2021 challenged books on August 4, 2021}, has been reprinted in countless languages and version, and has its own transmedia empire with a digital world on the internet, movies, video games, a play, theme parks, and I’m probably missing something.
It would take me a lifetime to analyze every aspect of this book and its importance and maybe I’ll do that eventually. If you think I missed something important or want to chime in, leave a comment <— that’s the beauty of this format, you can talk back to the teacher. For the purpose of this series, I’ll tackle key elements in the stories and use academic research to tie them into the book cycle; it’s like I’m Hermione and did your homework for you.
Now turn to page…
Part II: Harry Potter & the Book as Artifact
Citations
Brontë, C. as Bell, C. (1847/2009). Jane Eyre. Penguin Books.
Darnton, R. (1982). What is the history of books? Daedalus, Vol. 111.
Darnton, R. (1979). The business of enlightenment: A publishing history of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Lamb, A. (2021). Course readers for Book History 1450+ at IUPUI.
Morris, M. C. (2009). Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, and Animals: A Review of the Treatment of Nonhuman Animals and Other Sentient Beings in Christian-Based Fantasy Fiction. Society & Animals, 17(4), 343–356. https://doi-org.proxy.ulib.uits.iu.edu/10.1163/106311109X12474622855183
Palmer, L. K. (2010). Using Harry Potter to Introduce Students to DNA Fingerprinting & Forensic Science. American Biology Teacher (National Association of Biology Teachers), 72(4), 241–244. https://doi-org.proxy.ulib.uits.iu.edu/10.1525/abt.2010.72.4.8
Rowling, J.K. (1998). Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone. Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Press.
Tassell, J. (2014). Searching for the Harry Potter/ STEM Connection: Do You Need a “Room of Requirement” in Your School? School Science & Mathematics, 114(8), 365–366. https://doi-org.proxy.ulib.uits.iu.edu/10.1111/ssm.12095
*Some citations for web resources are linked directly in the post (in blue).