One next to a draft of text about Professor Quirrell explains that the author was “writing in biro, on unlined paper”. If this exhibition is to be a gateway drug for Potterheads, they’ll need to get used to po-faced gallery labels. The story of how she wrote the book, she says, “is written invisibly on every page, legible only to me.” Talking of invisible, a certain cloak hangs from a thick hook in a display case. There is also an annotated first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Hermione, it should be noted, has big curls. These illustrations were made several years before the first book’s publication. The real surprise from Rowling is a set of her own sketches of her characters (including Nearly Headless Nick and the squib Argus Filch). The bait is a sizeable loan from JK Rowling, including handwritten drafts, proofs, a scribbled map of Hogwarts ( pictured below © JK Rowling), a guide to the sorting hat, a gridded plot plan of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, on which one panel reads in fanfaring capitals, “DOESN'T REALISE UNTIL THERE THAT THE HALL CONTAINS PROPHECIES”. For one and a half days a week, you won’t be able to get in unless you’re in a school party (sections of it will be displayed on panels in 20 public libraries in the UK). The show is astutely pitched at younger gallery-goers. “I’ve got to get to the library!” says Hermione Grainger on the inside flap of the exhibition book. Harry Potter: A History of Magic is at the British Library.
0 kommentar(er)
