• DOI:10.1023/A:1022438704330
• Corpus ID: 141023445

The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter

@article{Tucker1999TheRA,
  title={The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter},
  author={Nicholas Tucker},
  journal={Children's Literature in Education},
  year={1999},
  volume={30},
  pages={221-234}
}

• N. Tucker
• Published 1 December 1999
• Art
• Children's Literature in Education

The phenomenal commercial and critical success of the first three Harry Potter stories is without precedent in twentieth-century British children's literature. Enid Blyton, a previous best-selling author, had to serve an apprenticeship papered by rejection slips before finally hitting the jackpot. Roald Dahl had less time to wait, but even so his first children's novel after years of writing for adults, James and the Giant Peach, won only modest success in America and could not initially find a British publisher. Other best-selling writers have made a lot of money quickly, but none has managed in a first novel to prove so instantly acceptable both to critics and to a vast international child and adult readership (the Potter series has already been translated into more than two dozen languages). In just two years, after being refused by at least two major publishers, J. K. Rowling is now the hottest property in children's literature and a serial prize-winner to boot. How has she managed it?