J.K. Rowling Calls New Harry Potter Bibliography Mind-Boggling

Posted on March 3, 2015

Can't get enough of Harry Potter? You are in luck. Philip Errington, Sotheby's director for children's books, has just written the definitive bibliography for Potter and Rowling fans. It took Errington five years to write the 544 tome called JK Rowling: A Bibliography 1997-2013.

Although the book has not been released in the U.S. yet, The Guardian has a copy and shared a few secrets. The book is a treasure trove for bibliophiles and Potter fans. Errington provides a complete bibliography for each of the Potter books and has an extensive section which details every print edition that was published of each book, which will be of immense help to book collectors.

But the book does much more than that. Errington dug through Bloomsbury's archives and interviewed its staff to obtain never before seen emails and correspondence which illuminates the editing process between JK Rowling and her editor. For example, one series of communications between Rowling and her editor Emma Matthewson about The Prisoner of Azkaban reveal that the revisions were so lengthy and excruciating that Ms. Rowling was getting pretty sick of the manuscript. She wrote, "I am so sick of re-reading this one that I’ll be hard put to smile when it comes to doing public readings from it. But perhaps the feeling will have worn off by next summer… "

Another interesting tidbit is that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire had three other possible titles suggested by Ms. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Death Eaters, Harry Potter and the Fire Goblet and Harry Potter and the Three Champions. Clearly, she went with the best choice.

J.K. Rowling had this to say about the book, "As someone who respects comprehensive research, I am in awe of the level of detail and amount of time Philip Errington has dedicated to this slavishly thorough and somewhat mind-boggling bibliography."

The bibliography will be released in the U.S. on April 23, 2015. It can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com.