St Mungo’s Hospital For Magical Maladies And Injuries
St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries is a hospital within the Harry Potter universe. Medics at the hospital are not called doctors, but are known as Healers and wear lime-green robes. Founded by famous wizard Healer Mungo Bonham, St Mungo’s is located in London. It was established to treat magical maladies, injuries or illnesses endemic to the Wizarding World. To enter the premises, one has to step through the window of what appears to be a derelict department store called Purge & Dowse Ltd. The exteriors of the hospital are red-bricked and dirty, which is the complete opposite of the interiors. Inside, everything is very neat and looks exactly as a hospital should. There are six floors. The emblem of St Mungo’s is a magic wand crossed with a bone. This is the hospital where Arthur Weasley is sent after he was attacked by Voldemort’s snake, Nagini, in the Ministry of Magic and Minerva McGonagall is hospitalised from severe stunning when Hagrid is forced out of Hogwarts. During one visit, Harry and company happen across Neville Longbottom, who has come with his grandmother to visit his parents in the long-term care ward. They also find former professor Gilderoy Lockhart there, still suffering from the effects of a backfired Memory Charm.
Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone
In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the book that started it all , Harry Potter discovers his true identity in the wee hours of his eleventh birthday: he is a wizard, famous in the magical world for having vanquished the evil Lord Voldemort when he was only a baby. This revelation, delivered by a gruff, hairy giant named Hagrid, sets Harry on a fantastical journey of a lifetime.
He meets bosom buddies Ron and Hermione aboard the Hogwarts Express, and is soon sorted with them into Gryffindor: the house of the intrepid and brave. However, Harry also makes plenty of enemies at Hogwarts, most notably the arrogant Draco Malfoy and the nasty potions master, Snape . And from battling a troll on Halloween to his first exhilarating Quidditch match not to mention the novels climax, in which Harry goes up against Voldemort for the second time in his young life theres never a dull moment in the first year of his new adventure.
Sorcerers Stone also perfectly balances exciting action with touching emotion, as Harry finds a true family in Ron and Hermione after years of misery with the Dursleys. Indeed, the books small, moving moments such as Harry being floored by a gift from Rons mother, or Hermiones tearful declaration at the end about books and cleverness are just as magical as the spells themselves.
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
Harry’s fifth year begins with him being attacked by Dementors in Little Whinging. Later, he finds out that the Ministry of Magic is in denial of Lord Voldemort’s return. Harry is also beset by disturbing and realistic nightmares, while Professor Umbridge, a representative of Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge, is the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Harry becomes aware that Voldemort is after a prophecy which reveals: “neither can live while the other survives.” The rebellion involving the students of Hogwarts, secret organisation Order of the Phoenix, the Ministry of Magic, and the Death Eaters begins.
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Early On The Books Were Extremely Controversial And In Many Ways They Still Are
Part of what made Harry Potter such a literary phenomenon is that so many kids were reading the books despite an unprecedented number of attempts to get them to stop reading the books.
The Harry Potter series, like many works of fantasy, involves wizardry and witchcraft. The feeling that the books thus promoted the occult proved to be the basis for constant challenges to the series presence in school libraries and bookstores by concerned conservative parents. The books first topped the American Library Associations list of the most banned books of the year in 1999, and remained in the top spot for most of the next decade.
In some regions, pressure to censor the series was so high it led to lawsuits: In 2003, a judge ordered an Arkansas school district that had removed the books from schools due to promotion of the religion of witchcraft to return them. Similar formal attempts at removal persisted into the latter half of the decade, and the books continue to rile up conservative religious leaders who warn of its demonic influence.
All of this controversy speaks not only to concerns that Rowlings work would negatively influence children, but to the reality that many of those children grew up to be arguably even more progressive than the books they grew up reading which is, in a way, a confirmation of conservatives worst fears about the series.
In The Meantime We’ll Be Saving Up Money
Theyre making Harry Potter vans… AKA Im gonna be poor soon
Jackie Willis
Some HP devotees are choosing to embrace Vans for the first time all because of this forthcoming collection. It’s a savvy marketing move to be sure: If the main objective of Vans is to use Harry Potter‘s insane worldwide reach to bring in new customers to the brand, they are definitely moving in the right direction. Well played, Vans.
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Why Adults Got So Obsessed With The Harry Potter Books
A 2012 study found that 55 percent of YA novels are bought by adults. In large part, that boom is courtesy of Harry Potter, which became a surprise crossover hit adored by both children and adults, and which made it acceptable for adults to read books that are ostensibly for children.
For some critics, thats a worrisome development, suggesting that adults are too dull and stupid to appreciate books actually written for adults. But there are plenty of reasons for a grown person to enjoy Harry Potter.
The Harry Potter books combine the intricate plotting of a mystery with the sweep and scope of epic fantasy and the intimacy and character development of a classic boarding school narrative. The result is purely pleasurable to read at any age: The puzzlebox mystery plotting keeps the pages turning propulsively forward, the fantastic mythology gives the world scope and magic and joy, and the boarding school structure makes the characters warm and familiar and charming.It also makestheir eventual death and trauma deeply affecting.
Its true that Rowlings prose is best described as workmanlike and competent if the reasonyou read is solely to enjoy perfectly balanced and polished sentences, you may be best served elsewhere. But if you are an adult who can imagine reading for more than one reason , the Harry Potter books become enormously appealing.
Harry Potters Popularity Completely Changed The Publishing Industry And The Effect Spilled Over To Hollywood
Here are just two of the ways Harry Potter changed publishing, and how those changes affected the rest of pop culture:
1) The books made it possible to publish long works aimed at children. Prior to Harry Potter, the accepted wisdom was that kids didnt have the attention span to read long books. And anyway, the thinking went, kids werent buying their own books. Their parents were paying for everything, and they would never be willing to pay an extra dollar or two for a longer book, with its extra printing and binding.
But after Harry Potter became an unstoppable cultural force, and it was clear that fans would keep buying thebooks no matter what, it started to expand. The last four volumes of the series are all doorstoppers that clock in at well over 700 pages each.
Publishers and childrens writers took notice. Booklist found that middle-grade novels expanded 115.5 percent between 2006 and 2016, the decade in which the Potter novels were at their longest.
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2) Harry Potter made childrens literature an unstoppable force. Before Harry Potter, childrens literature was often considered an afterthought. Sales were falling. Children, analysts would say wistfully, just werent reading anymore.
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Quidditch Through The Ages
Or maybe it’s J.K. Rowling’s smash-hit sport, Quidditch, that tickles your fancy. Today, Quidditch is an actual sport played at over 100 colleges in the United States such is the strength of the grip that it’s exerted on our public imagination. But if you’re interested in the academic side of Quidditch, Rowling’s got you covered with Quidditch Through the Ages, which will tell you all that you ever wanted to know about the history and rules behind Quidditch.
How The Timeline Differs Between The Harry Potter Books And Movies
The Wizarding World that author J. K. Rowling created for the Harry Potter series is ever-expanding. Subsequent works to the original series like the Fantastic Beasts franchise and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child fill out the world, exploring different time periods and locations where different generations of wizards existed.
But some newcomers to Harry Potter might wonder why the original Harry Potter books are set in one decade and the film franchise is set in another.
According to her website, Rowling came up with the idea for the book series in 1990 while sitting on a delayed train. She set the date for the books to match up with when she began writing them, which wound up being the same year as when the book series began, 1991. It wasn’t clear at the time if or when the book would actually be published so she used her present time period.
If you’ve read the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, you’ll notice it takes place in 1991. Harry was born in 1980, making him 11 when he starts his first year at Hogwarts. But that book was released in June 1997 and its United States version, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was released in 1998. Confused yet? Well, Rowling herself confirmed in a tweet that 2017 was the year Harry and Ginny’s son, Albus Severus, was about to start his first trip to Hogwarts 19 years after Harry left, making 1998 his seventh and final year.
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Why The Harry Potter Film Epilogue Never Stood A Chance
When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was filmed, the production team struggled with its famed “19 Years Later” epilogue.
After seven books, eight films, a theme park, and the creation of a veritable merchandising empire, you can hardly blame the Harry Potter production team for wanting to go out on a high note with the final installment of the beloved film franchise. But one final mountain loomed ominously before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II could wrap: the dreaded epilogue.
This 19 years later segment closes the final Harry Potter book with Harry and company at Kings Cross, sending their own children to Hogwarts. In theory, it provides closure, a happy ending for Harry, and the satisfaction of continuity with another generation of witches and wizards off to school. In practice, it was an absolute beast to film. For one, no one knew the best approach to handle the hair or the makeup required to age the 20-something cast into believable 39-year-old parents of 11-year-olds.
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Completion Of The Series
In December 2005, Rowling stated on her web site, “2006 will be the year when I write the final book in the Harry Potter series.” Updates then followed in her online diary chronicling the progress of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, with the release date of 21 July 2007. The book itself was finished on 11 January 2007 in the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh, where she scrawled a message on the back of a bust of Hermes. It read: “J. K. Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room on 11 January 2007.”
Rowling herself has stated that the last chapter of the final book was completed “in something like 1990”. In June 2006, Rowling, on an appearance on the British talk show Richard & Judy, announced that the chapter had been modified as one character “got a reprieve” and two others who previously survived the story had in fact been killed. On 28 March 2007, the cover art for the Bloomsbury Adult and Child versions and the Scholastic version were released.
In September 2012, Rowling mentioned in an interview that she might go back to make a “director’s cut” of two of the existing Harry Potter books.
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Platform Nine And Three
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The ride on the Hogwarts Express starts from King’s Cross railway stationplatform 9+3â4, which is hidden from view, and reached by walking through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10.
Rowling discovered after the books were published that she had confused the layout of King’s Cross with that of Euston station, and that platforms 9 and 10 at King’s Cross were not the ones between which she had meant her magical platform to be placed. There is no platform between lines 9 and 10 at King’s Cross. To solve this, the filmmakers re-numbered platforms 4 and 5 for the duration of filming. In reality, at both King’s Cross and Euston, platforms 9 and 10 are separated by railway lines. The exterior shots in the film are of the St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, which is part of St Pancras station, adjacent to King’s Cross station. From the outside St Pancras is much more visually dramatic than King’s Cross.
Live Action Television Series
On 25 January 2021, a live action television series was reported to have been in early development at HBO Max. Though it was noted that the series has “complicated rights issues”, due to a seven-year rights deal with Warner Bros. Domestic TV Distribution that included U.S. broadcast, cable and streaming rights to the franchise, which ends in April 2025.
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The Tales Of Beedle The Bard
On 4 December 2008, Rowling released The Tales of Beedle the Bard both in the UK and US.The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a spin-off of Deathly Hallows and contains fairy tales that are told to children in the “Wizarding World”. The book includes five short stories, including “The Tale of the Three Brothers” which is the story of the Deathly Hallows.
Amazon.com released an exclusive collector’s edition of the book which is a replica of the book that Amazon.com purchased at auction in December 2007.Seven copies were auctioned off in London by Sotheby’s. Each was illustrated and handwritten by Rowling and is 157 pages. It was bound in brown Moroccan leather and embellished with five hand-chased hallmarked sterling silver ornaments and mounted moonstones.
Rowling Made Up Her Middle Initial In Response To Her Publishers Sexism
In addition to assuming that the book would not sell well, the editorial team at Bloomsbury advised Rowling that she should not publish under her real name, Joanne Rowling, because boys would not read a book written by a woman. That sexist assumption certainly did not give much credit to boys, and took it for granted that girls would read a book written by men. Rowling, eager for success, agreed to write under the name J.K. Rowling. The J was her first initial. But Rowling does not have a middle name, so she used K as a tribute to her grandmother, Kathleen.
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Harry Potters Us Publication Made It A Bonafide Phenomenon
Harry Potter did fine when it first emerged in the UK 20 years ago, winning a Smarties Award and garnering respectable sales for its publisher, Bloomsbury. But it only started to approach phenomenon levels when Scholastic bought the US publication rights for an astonishing $105,000, about 10 times more than the average foreign rights sale at the time.
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Arthur Levine, the Scholastic editor who acquired the books, had an excellent eye for British books that would work in the US, having already acquired the US rights to Redwall and His Dark Materials. But even he didnt know that Harry Potter would grow as big as it did. He just knew that he loved it and wanted to publish it. Scholastic President Barbara Marcus Barbara Marcus kept saying do you love it? and Arthur said yes, so we went for it, a Scholastic spokesperson recalled in 2002. I would have been willing to go further than that if I had to,” Levine said in 2007.
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The $105,000 sale granted Harry Potter two things: a built-in publicity hook, and a big budget.
The hook came from the press: Newspapers featured articles about the little English book that had garnered such a huge sale. Reviewers wanted to know what kind of book would justify that kind of money. It was a curiosity, and as such, it was a story.
Rowling Owes Her Success To An 8
Like many first-time authors, Rowling struggled to get her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone published. The book was rejected by over a dozen publishers. Finally, a small British publisher, Bloomsbury, said yes. Bloomsbury saw the potential of the book because the chairman of the publishing house gave the first chapter to his then 8-year-old daughter, Alice, to read. Upon finishing, she immediately demanded the rest of the book. However, Bloomsbury was not convinced that it had a bestseller on its hands. Rowlings editor, Barry Cunningham, warned her that she needed to get a day job because it was impossible to make a living writing childrens books.
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