In 1995, Rowling completed her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter.[29] Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evans, a reader who had been asked to review the book’s first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was handed to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected it.[30] A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from the small publisher Bloomsbury.[31][30] The decision to take Rowling on was apparently largely due to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of the company’s chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father, and immediately demanded the next.[32] Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children’s books.[33] Soon after, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing.[29][34]
The following spring, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. Rowling has said she “nearly died” when she heard the news.[35] In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print-run of one thousand copies, five hundred of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000.[36]
Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year, and later, the Children’s Book Award. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher’s Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: a change Rowling claims she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.[12][29]
In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running.[29] She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.[37]
The title of the seventh Harry Potter book was revealed 21 December 2006 to be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.[38] On 1 February 2007 Rowling wrote on a bust in her hotel room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that she had completed the seventh book in that room on 11 January 2007.[39] Later in February 2007, Neil Blair, a lawyer with Rowling's literary agency, announced that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will not be released as an e-book, just as Rowling has not allowed the first six Potter books to be so released.[40] The seventh and final book of the series was released on July 21, 2007 (0:00 BST) and became the fastest-selling book of all time.[6]
All seven volumes of the Harry Potter series, one for each of Harry’s school years, have broken sales records. The last four have been, consecutively, the fastest-selling books in history, grossing more in their opening 24 hours than blockbuster films.[29][41] The series, totalling 4,195 pages,[42] has been translated into 65 languages.[43]
Rowling said she is "left wing" and that there is a certain amount of "political stuff" in Harry Potter, but that "every reader will bring their own agenda to the book."[44] Several articles have noted influences of Rowling's heroine, author Jessica Mitford, whom Rowling describes as a "self-taught socialist,"[45] and noted leftist themes in Harry Potter, like cooperation among the magical races,[46] anti-racism,[47] [48]and opposition to the slavery of House elves.[49] Rowling's three unforgivable spells- killing, torture, and enslavement- are also cited as influenced by her prior work with Amnesty International.[50]
The American communist newspaper People's Weekly World noted parallels between Rowling's heroine Jessica Mitford's fight against Nazism, which other members of Mitford's aristocratic family notoriously supported, and similar conflicts inside the Black Family in Harry Potter.[51] After the publication of Deathly Hallows, Rowling responded to queries about metaphors in the books for ethnic cleansing, 'Well, it is a political metaphor. But … I didn't sit down and think, "I want to recreate Nazi Germany," in the-- in the wizarding world. Because-- although there are-- quite consciously overtones of Nazi Germany, there are also associations with other political situations. So I can't really single one out.'[52]
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