20 things you didn’t know about the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter.

June 26th is the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Rowling’s first Harry Potter series novel. This series of magical stories has undoubtedly influenced readers. Over the past 20 years, it has sold 500 million copies all over the world and has been translated into more than 70 languages. It has been 10 years since the publication of the last novel in this series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but in the hearts of fans, Harry Potter is far from out of date.

On June 26th, news about the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter’s birth was screened in major foreign media, and people are still paying attention to this boy who survived. The Guardian published an article reviewing 20 interesting stories about Harry Potter in the past 20 years. Let’s take a look at what you don’t know about this most familiar novel.

On June 26th, in London, England, Harry Potter fans participated in activities related to the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The picture in this article is vision china

1. Some initial versions appreciate very quickly!

In 1997, when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was first printed, there were only 500 hardcover editions, of which 300 went to the library. If you find one of them, it’s worth a lot of money-you can expect to exchange it for at least 30,000 pounds. An interesting detail is that this hardcover edition has been lying on the bookshelf of the Daily Telegraph for many years, but at the beginning of the 21st century, it mysteriously disappeared. If you are the little bastard who stole the book, please contact Ms. Kate Summersacale, the original literary editor of the newspaper.

2. Even a wise man worries a lot, sometimes he loses.

In "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", when Harry Potter finally fights Voldemort, he uses a flashback spell, which can make the magic wand reappear one by one, and the phantoms of people who died under Voldemort’s magic wand appear from the magic wand one by one. Harry’s father James appeared before his mother Lily. However, according to the previous stories of "Harry Potter" series, James died in the process of protecting Harry and Lily from escaping, which should be later than Lily. Fans speculated that Rowling had laid a foreshadowing for a great book here, but Rowling finally admitted that it was a clerical error and corrected the plot in later versions.

3. hindsight is precious.

On June 26, 1997, when Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released, it was almost completely ignored. On that day, people obviously elected Bertie Ahern to the Republic of Ireland (remember him? ) more interested in the news of the new prime minister. They are still quarrelling about the new British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and they are curious about the love life of Princess Diana. The rest are crazy about Spice Girls. By the way, the best-selling novel of that year belonged to John Grisham.

4. Children’s books can also be political.

One of Rowling’s smartest decisions is to let her characters and readers grow together at the same speed. Each book is set in a school year, and then gradually becomes long, dark and adult in theme. In the fourth book "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", Hermione established the House-elf Promotion Association to fight for the rights and interests of these elves who were treated as natural slaves. Rowling also made rita skeeter, a journalist who likes to reverse black and white, appear in this book. Moreover, anyone can see that the extermination of the half-blood "mudblood" by pure-blood wizards in this book alludes to the Nazi genocide policy.

As soon as scholars think, we laugh.

The academic research of Harry Potter has become a hot topic. Take a quick look at the title of these papers: "On the Gryphon with Winged Beast as the Best Case of Intertextuality in Harry Potter"; "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: A Psychoanalytic Perspective"; "From the Holocaust to 9.11: The struggle between the contemporary world and evil forces from the perspective of Harry Potter."

6. Some people are as stupid as stumps.

In some parts of the United States, Christian fundamentalists burned a large number of Rowling’s Harry Potter books because they thought they were encouraging children to engage in witchcraft. "Behind those innocent faces is the power of Satan." Reverend Jack Brock from the community of christ Church in Alamogordo, N.M., said in 2001, "Harry Potter is the devil, and he is destroying people."

7. Long before Starbucks, small cafes were a good place to write novels.

As we all know, when writing the first Harry Potter, Rowling was still a single mother, and she finished this masterpiece with cups of coffee in Nicholson Cafe and Elephant Cafe in Edinburgh. Twenty years later, the former has become a Chinese restaurant, and the latter is crowded with tourists every day. You probably have to work hard to finish a book there.

The wall of the elephant cafe is full of messages from Harry Potter fans.

9. You can sell children’s books to adults

Harry Potter is a big hit. In order to let adults participate in and enjoy his adventure, but avoid being seen reading children’s books in public, booksellers began to think of ways. In 1998, Bloomsbury publishing plc released the first wave of so-called "adult version"-in fact, nothing was added to the content, only a more serious-looking cover was added.

10. Books can be so mysterious that even translators can’t get them.

At the craziest time-roughly speaking, it started with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire-the release of new books in the middle of the night was closely guarded, and even translators could not get their copies before the original English version was put into the bookstore. This kind of feeling may be very painful. For example, although the French translators work as a team and keep translating, they still keep seeing that the sales of the English version are hitting new highs again and again.

Some people will never like it.

Byatt was commissioned by The New York Times to write a book review on the Harry Potter series. "The world in Harry Potter created by Rowling is a’ second-hand world’, and she pieced together this story by looking for inspiration from various children’s books." After reading the novel, she was puzzled. "This novel is written for those whose imagination is limited to TV cartoons." She wrote these words with a very rigorous attitude, but it made her a cancer to deliberately slander the novel in the eyes of loyal fans.

12. There are more than one way to make money from copyright.

Relying on the wildest imaginations, Rowling and her publishers saw the great possibility of online fans creating novels, which allowed the fanatical Harry Potter fans to participate in the story and at the same time continued this fanaticism. She gave an "official blessing", of course, including two warnings: don’t use it to publish and sell money; Don’t involve obscene content.

13. Publishing houses are more powerful than supermarkets

In the chaos on the release day of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Asda, a supermarket retail giant, accused bloomsbury publishing plc of "blatant profiteering" and "trying to kidnap children" by pricing the book at 17.99 euros. Bloomsbury publishing plc threatened to sue for libel-but, crucially, to cancel 500,000 hardcover books given to Asda. "If they want their 500,000 books back, they will come to negotiate with us peacefully," bloomsbury publishing plc said. "This may be good news for all disappointed customers in Asda, because they don’t need to go to a soulless Asda bookshelf to buy their books. "It took Asda less than a day to get the book back for their soulless bookshelf with a humble response.

14. Anything related to Harry Potter can be sold.

Once, a company sold "Harry Potter condoms" and caused some lawsuits, but it was only an accident after all. Perhaps the most popular product around Hogwarts was the vibrating plastic broom-"I am 32 years old, but I like riding this broom as much as my 12-year-old and 7-year-old children", said a typical reader’s message on Amazon.

15. Writers can also taste violence.

Those who don’t understand novels may think that the authors are sentimental. But the reality is not that simple. According to the statistics of Harry Potter fans, "158 famous novel characters with surnames have died so far". In the last few books, the main characters left one by one-I can’t spoil them, but most of them are gone anyway.

16. Books sell like hot cakes, but book retailers don’t make any money.

Supermarkets may be the biggest losers. They even have a clearance sale at a price below the cost. Independent bookstores are even cheaper to buy from Tesco than publishers. Think about it, what will it be like if the online book agreement is still in force?

Author Rowling’s hand drawing in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

17. Boarding schools can also be fun!

After decades of declining students, boarding schools suddenly ushered in a wave of application frenzy in the late 1990s, which was attributed by the class teachers to the "Harry Potter effect". Some even plan to build more dormitories to meet the demand. As an opponent of boarding schools, critic Alex Renton gritted his teeth and calmly pointed out: Like most writers of boarding schools, Rowling went to day schools.

Harry Potter fans left their own fingerprints next to Rowling’s.

18. Good writers have several brushes.

Rowling’s first novel, Casual Vacancy, was written for adults, focusing on class, politics and beliefs, and discussing drug abuse and rape. It also wrote a sex scene, which almost won the "worst sex scene description award" in Literary Review magazine, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. The judges thought that although it was bad, it did not meet the standards required by the award.

19. You can’t remain anonymous

Like Stephen King, Rowling also wants to try the best-selling novelist writing under a pseudonym. The first attempt was "Comoran Detective Series", followed by "The Call of the Cuckoo" in 2013, all of which appeared on the bookshelves under the author’s name "Robert Galbraith" (the so-called "plainclothes detective of the former Royal Military Police"), and they all sold well. It took the Sunday Times three months to find out that Rowling was the author.

20. there will always be more

Although Rowling ended the Harry Potter series, she didn’t leave all these characters behind. In the "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" stage play and the 18,000-word extra content on the "More Potter" website, Rowling has derived a series of stories based on the original content. For publishers, a postcard written by Rowling in 2008 is undoubtedly their "holy grail", with an 800-word writing outline on it. At a charity auction, this postcard sold for 25,000 pounds, but no one knows where it has gone now, because it was stolen quietly earlier this year.