It was on this day in 1997 that the first book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in Britain. Joanne (JK) Rowling (books by this author) was an unemployed, single mother waiting for a delayed train, when an idea suddenly came to her. “I did not have a functioning pen with me,” she said. “I simply sat and thought for four hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me ... I began to write that very evening.”

Posted by Mark at 2021-06-26 12:12:35 UTC