25 years of Harry Potter: Why the children's book still casts a spell over readers of all ages

Harry Potter is the boy who lived and continues to live on in the hearts and imaginations of children, many of whom are now most decidedly adults who were introduced to the world of modern witches and wizards 25 years ago.

On 26 June 1997 Bloomsbury published a book by an unknown writer called JK Rowling whose manuscript about a parallel wizarding world was famously rejected by publisher after publisher. Many editors were put off by the length of the first book – at 60,000 words it was deemed too long to fit the bill for a popular children's book.

But, by the summer of 2022, Bloomsbury would have sold 500 million copies making the Potter series the best-selling book series in history.

Rowling was not the first to break into the genre of a magical school where young witches and wizards come of age while navigating the outside world, but she sure was the first one to make such a world more accessible and believable because of her attention to detail, her clever knack of overlapping the real with the fictional, and she made it all quite funny and uncomplicated.

She has been criticised for her rather flat prose, but there too lies the appeal of the books – they could reach a wider audience and in the initial days, the books exchanged hands and bookshelves just by word of mouth.

Those were the days before social media, so one can truly gauge the success of the Harry Potter series as they sold the world over with little to no marketing. By the time the third book –the Prisoner of Azkaban - was out in 1999, the boy with the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead was already a thunderous phenomenon.

Most of the first readers of the series would have borrowed the book from a friend, their parents would have then read it and both would have recommended the book in their circles and so on.

By the time Harry Potter entered his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) the books had cast a spell on larger audiences, not just children and their parents, but even other adults were immersing themselves into the magical world of school-going witches and wizards.

Rowling was outselling adult authors, though interestingly, her first book for adults – A Casual Vacancy published in 2012 – received mixed reviews and had limited success.

I was an early adopter of the book at the age of 8 or 9, and it came to me too by word of mouth by someone whose opinion I did not entirely trust so I continued reading Enid Blyton’s “The Secret Sevens” and “The Famous Fives” until Potter found his way to me again as a gift from a relative who stayed in America and then, once again, as a birthday present.

As a matter of principle, I read the books gifted to me on birthdays, so I finally picked up my second Harry Potter copy, it was published by Scholastic and had the memorable cover designed by Mary GrandPré who is also the brain behind the iconic lightning bolt on the letter P of Potter that became the custom “logo” going forward for all books, movies and merchandise related to the series. The Scholastic version was called “Sorcerer’s Stone” and I realise now that the old tome I have could one day be a rare edition worth preserving for posterity!

Speaking of posterity, will the sensation that was Harry Potter be as appealing for generations down the line, say even another 25 years from now?

The themes and experiences that the books deal with are of course timeless – friendship, love, coming of age, and the fight for what is good and just will not lose their relevance.

And the world of magic that Rowling created that exists seamlessly alongside the muggle world is still a place that one can suspend their disbelief and enter – surely an abandoned old boot could be a portkey that whisks you away to a far-off place (because who in their right minds would touch and test it), and a wall between two railway platforms could take you to another world if you dared to crash into the barrier (please try that one with caution) and that cat which watches you with a mixture of boredom and disdain could be the animagus Transfiguration professor Minerva McGonagall whose exacting standards of dressing and behaviour you fail to match (who knows).

But the most enduring lesson and the one that makes the series worth revisiting, not to escape the reality of life but to remember what is worth living for, is that the greatest magic is not cast by spells but only requires one to perform ordinary acts of extraordinary love and courage.