Note: Rowling’s middle name is not in fact Kathleen, that is part of her pseudonym, she does not seem to have an actual middle name. J.K. Rowling is therefore not her real name, but her preferred name/pseudonym. Allegedly she chose it when writing because it meant that readers wouldn’t think she was a woman. Her birth name is Joanne Rowling.
She has also published under the male pseudonym Robert Galbraith, a name similar to that of an infamous founder and proponent of gay “conversion therapy” (which is torture, not therapy). Although Rowling claims that isn’t why she chose the name, it is still disturbing that the name’s association wasn’t enough for her to pick another. Any chosen pseudonym would be researched first in part due to legal concerns and therefore it cannot be claimed that nobody knew.
It would seem that there are many similarities between Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter series and other older creations, most of which she has never acknowledged. These similarities are much more interesting when considering the fact that Rowling has used some of her millions to sue other people and get their books banned due to similarities to Harry Potter. I have tried to collect a few quotes, images and links showing the similarities between works in a single place. While there are more in depth write-ups I believe this one is the most comprehensive.
Rowling has talked of general similarities between her works and those of predecessors but for almost all of the works included in this list she has either avoided talking about the similarities or denied that they were inspirations.
Although due to the sheer number of works created it’s likely impossible to create something that doesn’t have any similarities with previously existing works, the similarities included here seem to go beyond mere coincidences and simple tropes.
Books Of Magic (comic book series)
A young British boy with round glasses and long dark hair, is taught how to become a wizard by various magical mentors, the first of whom gifts him with a pet owl that serves as a messenger, as he is believed to be destined to save the world from supernatural evil.
He ends up visiting old magical castles, travelling through time, teleporting, going through old mysterious grimoires, encountering magical creatures inspired by popular folklore and battling evil including an evil snake.
Later on he even joins a magical school and has to wear a uniform.
He also has family problems and his parents are attacked by his nemesis.
The first one of this series was published in 1990, seven years before the first Harry Potter book was published.
The similarities were enough that they could include the following moment copied from Harry Potter in a later comic and know that they were safe from being sued by Rowling (since any lawsuit from her part would have to deal with the fact that Harry Potter shares many similarities to the first comics) :
In the last issue of the ongoing (second) The Books of Magic series, writer/artist Peter Gross played on the similarity to Potter, showing Tim’s step brother Cyril putting on a glamour stone that made him look like Timothy. Cyril then walked through the wall between platforms 9 and 10 at a train station, and not just any train station: King’s Cross, in London.
Timothy Hunter as a name is the combination of a popular British name and a surname named after a job that comes from Medieval times (which is also the case for Harry Potter)
According to TV Tropes: <<Some people have accused Rowling of ripping off Neil Gaiman’s Comic Book The Books of Magic, which also features a young, dark haired, bespectacled wizard-in-training who has a pet owl. […] The idea for a Books of Magic movie has been pretty thoroughly killed because it would be universally derided as a Harry Potter ripoff.>>
Neil Gaiman: <<I don’t own Sandman or Books of Magic/Tim Hunter — they were both work for hire and are owned by DC Comics, a Time-Warner company, have been since they were created in the 80s.>>
He had previously written, years earlier: <<As I said to the Scotsman journalist, the […] bother was that in the BOOKS OF MAGIC movie Warners is planning, Tim Hunter can no longer be a bespectacled, 12 year old English kid.>>
<<It turns out that Tim is no longer gonna be a 12-year-old, bespectacled English boy who’s learning magic for some strange reason [too similar to Harry Potter]. He’s gonna be about 16–17 and American and he’ll still wear glasses, but they won’t be so…round.>>
<<A film version of The Books of Magic has been in development hell for many years. […] with Neil Gaiman signing on as executive producer in 1998.[50] After several years of drafting and redrafting, the script moved so far from the original concept that Gaiman and Paul Levitz advised the filmmakers that any audience seeing it expecting a film based on the comic would be disappointed, and decided to develop the movie themselves. They worked with screenwriter Matt Greenberg, who had written early drafts of the original script, to come up with some closer to the original story.[51] As yet, no adaption has been filmed or scheduled for release.>> [Wikipedia]
It’s interesting to see that Warner Brothers owns the film rights to both Harry Potter and the Books of Magic series, as well as the fact that Neil Gaiman doesn’t seem to have much control over it . That and Rowling’s immense wealth might be what is protecting her from lawsuits, although the main factor is likely simply that Warner Bros isn’t going to sue themselves since they seem to own most of the rights to the comics and films.
<<The writer Neil Gaiman has called Rowling’s depiction of boarding school a “weird and idealized” vision of something that’s “really all about bullying, torture and [in deference to any children who might be reading this, let’s just say that the last word he mentioned refers to an activity usually practiced alone].” >> (quoted in an article by Laura Miller for Salon from 2007)
A film adaptation seems to have eventually been abandoned once Harry Potter was more successful and it was realised that it would be judged too similar.
Part of the reason that the Books of Magic didn’t have as much success is likely due to the fact that they were targeted at an older, more mature teenage/young adult audience compared to Harry Potter’s wider targeted audience and that they are aimed at people already familiar with the D.C. Comics magical universes. This means that the potential audience of the Books of Magic series was drastically smaller than that of the Harry Potter series.
In the case of the Books of Magic, the magical platform in King’s Cross station was inspired by Harry Potter but Harry Potter is not the origin of that particular concept.
The Secret of Platform 13 (book)
<< Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform 13 (first published in 1994 [3 years before the 1st Harry Potter book]) features a gateway to a magical world located in King’s Cross station in London. The protagonist belongs to the magical world but is raised in the normal world by a rich family who neglect him and treat him as a servant, while their fat and unpleasant biological son is pampered and spoiled. >> [Wikipedia]
Also, the secret magical child, who is thin, has dark hair and is kept in a cupboard by his abusive family, is told the truth about his family origins and is rescued by a team that includes a giant and an elderly wizard with a long white beard and is taken back to the magical world full of wizards, witches and other fantastical creatures.
Also she wrote Which Witch? (first published in 1979) and Not just a Witch (first published in 1989) which are both set in the same universe and have many similarities with Harry Potter. The second one in fact starts off with the main characters going to a wizard school.
<<The names “Hedwig” and “Hermione” were also in two of Eva Ibbotson’s books>> The name Hermione seems to be the name of a female student in the book Journey to the River Sea but that book was 1st published in 2001 (4 years after the 1st Harry Potter book), so for that particular element it doesn’t seem to be plagiarism.
<<She has also written romantic adult novels, better known in Germany and America but still with a loyal following over here, and seven jokey books for nine-to-11 year olds. The best of these, Which Witch? and The Secret of Platform 13, had distinctly Harry Potter-ish overtones well before that young hero first flourished his wand in print.>> [The Independent, published online 2011 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/eva-ibbotson-journey-of-a-lifetime-554075.html ]
<<She prefigured Harry Potter with her book The Secret of Platform 13, which describes an extra, mysterious platform at King’s Cross station. Critics said she could sue J K Rowling for plagiarism, but instead Ibbotson said she “would like to shake her by the hand. I think we all borrow from each other as writers.”>>
<<I would say the resemblances in the storyline, including characters and locations, between Eva Ibbotson’s charming The Secret of Platform 13 and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone points at the least to some creative borrowing. And what did Ibbotson have to say about Rowling’s use of her material? She said she would ‘like to shake her by the hand. I think we all borrow from each other as writers’. What a gracious woman.
The story of a young boy with an unknown past, being raised as no better than a slave in a household of gluttonous, selfish and cruel adoptive caretakers (with a son who is the twin of Dudley Dursley) is a familiar one. The daring rescue, full of mishaps, misconceptions and a magical talent show worthy of a Quidditch World Cup halftime show, is it’s own, stand-alone adventure.>>
<<Many people have commented on how similar Harry Potter (first published in 1997) is to The Secret of Platform Thirteen (published in 1994). Raymond Trottle and Dudly Dursly are both fat and rude, there’s a doorway to a magical world inside a train station, an old wizard, and several other parallels.
To answer your next question: no, J.K. Rowling does not admit to having been inspired by The Secret of Platform Thirteen. She stated on Pottermore her reason for using King’s Cross Station was “personal.”
Unlike other authors, Ibbotson never filed a lawsuit over the similarities and, in fact, is quoted saying she would, “like to shake her [Rowling] by the hand. I think we all borrow from each other as writers(.)”>>
Mrs. Ibbotson said that rather than suing for plagiarism, she’d like to shake Ms. Rowlings’ hand, believing that “we all borrow from each other as writers”.
This quote of Ibbotson’s was reported by Amanda Craig in 2005. [See: http://www.amandacraig.com/pages/childrens/articles/harrys_heirs.htm ] She interviewed Ibbotson for the Times in 2005: http://www.amandacraig.com/pages/childrens/reviews/eva_ibbotson_interview.htm
Eva Ibbotson died in 2010 aged 85 and she had been ill for a while. As a result even if she had changed her mind and wanted to sue Rowling, she likely would have been too ill for what would realistically be a long court battle.
Translated from German to English: .<<Her works include the book “The Secret of Platform 13”, which was published in 1994. In it she invented the “secret platform” in London’s Kings Cross station, which Joanne K. Rowling took up in her Harry Potter novels”] and the title of the article “Erfinderin von Harry Potters geheimem Bahnhof tot” can be translated as “Inventor of Harry Potter’s secret train station dead”>>.
[The original section of text reads <<Zu ihren Werken zählt unter anderem das Buch „Das Geheimnis von Bahnsteig 13“, das 1994 erschien. Darin erfand sie den „geheimen Bahnsteig“ im Londoner Bahnhof Kings Cross, den Joanne K. Rowling in ihren Harry-Potter-Romanen aufgriff>>]
From the website of German newspaper Die Welt (“The World”): https://www.welt.de/kultur/article10754157/Erfinderin-von-Harry-Potters-geheimem-Bahnhof-tot.html
<<The Secret of Platform 13 features a mysterious platform at King’s Cross station that leads to another, magical world. Published in 1994, three years before JK Rowling’s Harry Potter set off for Hogwart’s from King’s Cross’s platform 9¾, the book’s possible influence on Rowling has occasionally been raised>>
From the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/22/children-author-eva-ibbotson-dies-aged-85
<<Yet in the 25 witty, erudite novels she wrote over the course of a long career, whether her stories about ghosts, witches and wizards, which anticipated Harry Potter by two decades, or the classic adventures she turned to in later years […] her exhaustion from the incurable illness of the immune system, lupus, she suffered from in the last years of her life.
[…]
The Secret of Platform 13 (1994), which contained the model for J K Rowling’s platform 9 ¾ >>
From the Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9362131/Before-JK-Rowling-there-was-Eva-Ibbotson.html
<<The Secret of Platform 13 has a mysterious platform underneath Kings Cross station […] This was several years before Harry Potter was a twinkle in the eyes of J.K. Rowling. >> From the Scotsman https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary-eva-ibbotson-writer-2441962
A Wizard of Earthsea (book/series)
<<A student in a magical school who grew up in an unloving house… check. Said student having an arrogant aristocrat rival… check. A magical forest near the school… check. An extremely talented wizard being an arrogant jerk until a terrible accident… check. Said wizard becoming a magical school’s headmaster… check. A school’s headmaster performing a Heroic Sacrifice to save a student… check. The headmaster’s bird familiar vanishing soon after his death… check. Aesops about the immorality of immortality and resurrection… check. A heavily warded magical school with separate subjects like herbs, transformation, charms, history (well, heroic song)… check. Ursula K. Le Guin, the Earthsea trilogy, first published in 1968 to 1972.>> [TV Tropes]
In fact is at least a quartet, not a trilogy: <<The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1973) and Tehanu (1990), has never been out of print, and was augmented in 2001 by Tales from Earthsea and the novel The Other Wind.>>
<<The Earthsea Cycle, together with A Wizard of Earthsea: The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu (1990), The Other Wind (2001), and Tales from Earthsea (2001).>>
<<The basic premise of Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea (Parnassus, 1968), in which a boy with unusual aptitude for magic is recognised, and sent to a special school for wizards, resembles that of Harry Potter.[47] On his first day, Ged encounters two other students, one of whom becomes his best friend, and the other, a haughty aristocratic rival. Ged later receives a scar in his struggle with a demonic shadow which can possess people. At the beginning of his journey, he is overconfident and arrogant, but after a terrible tragedy caused by his pride, is forced to rethink his ways, and later becomes a very respected wizard and headmaster, much like Albus Dumbledore.>>
<< Modern writers have credited A Wizard of Earthsea for introducing the idea of a “wizard school”, which would later be made famous by the Harry Potter series of books,[5] and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard, also present in Harry Potter.[53]
Reviewers have also commented that the basic premise of A Wizard of Earthsea, that of a talented boy going to a wizard’s school and making an enemy with whom he has a close connection, is also the premise of Harry Potter.[53] Ged also receives a scar from the shadow, which hurts whenever the shadow is near him, just as Harry Potter’s scar from Voldemort. >>
<<Thirty years before Harry Potter, Ursula Le Guin was writing novels about a school for wizards. As well as good and evil, her fantasy worlds also address issues of race and gender>>
<<Her credit to JK Rowling for giving the “whole fantasy field a boost” is tinged with regret
“[…] she could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn’t one of them. That hurt.” >>
<<Some of her earlier books [are] about a slave-owning society obsessed with purity of lineage.>> [This description also applies to Harry Potter: see the theme of purebloods and the house-elves]
<<Harry Potter and the boy wizard tradition
The parallels between Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea and JK Rowling’s creation are striking, part of a tradition of boy wizards in fantasy fiction dating back to CS Lewis.
JK Rowling has been sniffy towards the fantasy tradition of which she is part, claiming she’d rather curl up with the latest Roddy Doyle rather than Tolkien. Earthsea author Ursula Le Guin returned the compliment, saying of Harry Potter:
“When so many adult critics were carrying on about the ‘incredible originality’ of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled,” she told the Guardian in 2004. “It seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a ‘school novel’, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.”
A young man, fleeing unhappy domestic circumstances [including a dead mother], enrols at a mysterious school for magicians. There, he makes friends, cultivates enemies and gains a nemesis with whom he shares an intimate connection. […]
On paper, the parallels between Earthsea and Potter are striking. Ged, the hero of Earthsea, is a stereotypical little boy lost, his mother dead[…].
At the wizard’s school of Roke he is taken under the wing of the Dumbledore-esque Archmage Nemmerle and begins a rivalry with slithery posh boy Jasper, a hissing cad explicitly in the Draco Malfoy mould. >> [Irish Times, 2016]
Many critics have found that Le Guin’s writing is superior to Rowling’s: <<The most thrilling, wise and beautiful children’s novel ever, it is written in prose as taut and clean as a ship’s sail>> [Craig, 2003]
Le Guin also handles issues of race and gender far better, as well as being far more nuanced and respectful when drawing on native cultures.
<<“I made a conscious choice to make most of my characters people of colour.” In the Earthsea books, Ged is a dark copper-red, and his friend Vetch is black. “I’ve had endless battles with cover departments. Gradually the people on the books are darkening — it’s taken that long.”>> [Guardian, 2004]
<<What can be stated with confidence is that both Earthsea and Potter are part of the wider tradition of boy wizards in fantasy fiction (a genre which Rowling has, it is true, been sniffy towards, once claiming she’d rather curl up with the latest Roddy Doyle rather than Tolkien).
All the way back to 1955 and CS Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew pale young men with the weight of creation on their shoulders have been getting tangled up on magic. Conceived by Lewis as an origin story for his Narnia chronicles, The Magician’s Nephew features the proto-Potter figure of Digory Kirke, who stumbles into a world of sorcery and wonder (all lathered in Lewis’s patented Christian allegory [which is something Rowling also frequently does to the point people joked that she would kill off Harry and have him resurrected , thinking it was satire…) and, en route saving mankind, learns what it is to be an adult.
However, it was post-Wizard of Earthsea (which Le Guin followed with a series of increasingly metaphysical sequels) that this micro-genre took flight.
In Raymond E Feist’s 1982 doorstopper Magician, for example, the boy Pug is discovered to have innate powers and is apprenticed to court wizard Kulgan, later becoming the most powerful mage in the kingdom of Midkemia.
With a gritty streak and expletive-heavy dialogue, Magician will appeal more to Game of Thrones fans than to Potter-heads. Nonetheless, those who appreciated Harry Potter for its world building rather than for its Billy Bunter qualities will find much here worth delving into. Pug is a sweet kid trying to abide by a moral code in a brutally reactionary environment and, though some may find the Tolkien-esque Elves and dragons off-putting, the character’s arc from scrappy urchin to quasi-immortal is powerfully drawn and affecting.>> [Irish Times]
The Worst Witch (book series, later turned into multiple TV series, a film and a stage production)
<<Many see striking similarities between “Harry Potter” and “The Worst Witch,” by Jill Murphy. Murphy wrote the first “The Worst Witch” novel in 1974 when only 18. This book was made into a 1986 movie [before the first HP book was even published].
“The Worst Witch” is the original story of Mildred Hubble and her life at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches,” which Jill Murphy based on own school. A pointed hat was added to her normal school uniform, and spelling class actually became SPELLing class. “Miss Cackle’s Academy For Witches.” “The Worst Witch” was written almost 20 years before the first Harry Potter book, and the movie was made 15 years before “Harry Potter” was filmed.>>
<<In this precursor to the Potter books, a young girl [...] attends a boarding school for witches. Which is in an ancient castle surrounded by an enchanted forest. While Mildred Hubble is enrolled at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches, where she attends Potions, Broomstick Flying, Chants and Charms classes, she must deal with conflicts with her classmates, a cursed broom, and an attempt to overthrow the school. Also, Mildred and her friends make an invisibility potion. […] There’s a mean teacher who hates the main character, and a popular blond kid who gets off on the wrong foot with the hero on the very first day. >>
<<An isolated castle containing a magic school, with a forest nearby? A protagonist who has no prior knowledge of the magical world? A rival who comes from a leading magical family? A hook-nosed Potions teacher who favours the rival and despises the protagonist? A kindly, grey-haired Head who is fond of the protagonist? Classes in Charms and broomstick riding? Yep, that’s Jill Murphy’s The Worst Witch, six volumes published 1974, ’80, ’82, ’93, 2005, 2007.>>
The similarities go much further:
A young British kid with dark unruly hair goes to an ancient castle (with a Great Hall) surrounded by an enchanted forest (that is forbidden to students). The castle serves as a boarding school for witches and the students are all meant to wear black robes and a uniform.
The school can’t be seen by non-magicians, and has a village nearby.
Some quotes:
“Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches stood at the top of a high mountain surrounded by a pine forest. It looked more like a prison than a school, with its gloomy grey walls and turrets. Sometimes you could see the pupils on their broomsticks flitting like bats above the playground wall, but usually the place was half hidden in mist, so that if you glanced up at the mountain you would probably not notice the building was there at all.”
“Mildred Hubble was in her first year at the school. She was one of those people who always seem to be in trouble. She didn’t exactly mean to break rules and annoy the teachers, but things just seemed to happen whenever she was around. You could rely on Mildred to have her bootlaces trailing along the floor. She couldn’t walk from one end of a corridor to the other without someone yelling at her, and nearly every night she was writing lines or being kept in (not that there was anywhere to go if you were allowed out). Anyway, she had lots of friends, even if they did keep their distance in the potion laboratory, and her best friend Maud stayed loyally by through everything, however hair-raising.”
They are taught to ride broomsticks in the courtyard of the school, as well as potions by a mean imposing teacher with a long face, hooked nose and thin body, dressed completely in black, who hates the main character. The potions teacher is also hated in the school and has a mean glare.
In contrast, the head of the school is a “ benevolent elderly, white-haired bespectacled” magician addicted to sweets who sorts out disagreements between the students and teachers, helps the main character out of trouble and serves as a friend and advisor to the main character.
This is useful since the main character “has a penchant for breaking the rules and getting away with it and fall[s] into situations in which they save the lives of their fellow students and teachers”.
The main character is also brave, persevering and “more powerful than they give themselves credit for”. They also have a special relationship with their pet/familiar.
On their first day of school they make “enemies with the rich, arrogant, blonde kid” who is “from a very prominent witch family” and whose “father heads the school’s Board of Governors”.
The arrogant blonde antagonist is also favoured by the potions teacher and does well in potions class.
There’s also a villain who tries to steal someone’s identity and take over the school.
<<Maud Moonshine (called Maud Warlock in the movie) is Mildred’s loyal best friend, with whom she gets into trouble at Miss Cackle’s. Maud is Ron and Hermione in one. Like Hermione, she is very booksmart. And like Ron, she comes from an old witching family, but not as prestigious as some. Also like Ron, she has had a few siblings before her go through Miss Cackle’s Academy. In this picture, Maud and Mildred accidentally turned themselves invisible in the potions lab.>> This creates a scene where only the main character’s head is visible, much like the scene where only Harry’s head is visible and the rest of his body is invisible.
In the book series, the main character end up in fact being part of a trio of friends (the third friend is Enid Nightshade).
There’s also a famous male celebrity who likes to dress in pastel who comes to visit the school (similar to Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter).
For some more visual similarities: https://hellogiggles.com/reviews-coverage/books/harry-potter-worst-witch/
[Unfortunately this article titled <<All the ways that “Harry Potter” is exactly like “The Worst Witch”>> seems to have been deleted. It was written by Kayleigh Roberts around 05 in 2016. Excerpts: <<Harry Potter and The Worst Witch are virtually identical. If you love the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, then>> <<the Harry Potter series shares a lot (a whole lot) in common with the world of fellow magical-children’s-book-series-turned-movie The Worst Witch (specifically the… >> Unfortunately the full page has not been archived only an incomplete cache is available which will likely soon be deleted]. It may have been deleted due to legal threats.
In the screen adaptation there’s even a house system within the school (which is something that is relatively common to school’s in the U.K).
<<Rowling has not acknowledged that Murphy’s work was an inspiration, although The Worst Witch was first published in 1974 and had become a best-selling series by the time Rowling sat down to write her first Harry Potter story.>>
<<I was […] thrilled to find the publishers were quirky like me. The only changes they asked me to make were to the broomsticks, which, not being a witch myself, I’d drawn with people sitting on the “comfy bit”, which made it look as if they were flying backwards!
They also asked if I could make the school co-ed, which I didn’t want to do. In retrospect, that would have queered the pitch for those who came after me.”
This is as close as Murphy comes to referring to the oft-noted similarity between the wizarding world of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series (the first of which appeared in 1997) and that of Mildred Hubble’s witches. When pushed on the subject, she will say only, politely, “I don’t talk about that. It would be nice, I suppose, if people would say thank you. But you have to be gracious.”>> Telegraph, 2019
Part of the reason that the Worst Witch didn’t have as much success as HP could in part be due to the fact that it is in an all girl’s school which may have limited the audience, since studies have found that although boys are less likely to show interest in media with a female main character than girls are . That alone would contribute to Harry Potter being more successful even if both were as good as each other.
The Sword In The Stone (book, 1st of a series) by T.H. White
First published in 1938
<<Similarities: An unwanted boy destined to be the man who saves England is taken in by a blue-eyed, long-bearded wizard who keeps odd birds and uses radical methods of pedagogy. Also, there are dragons.
Is there a case? Rowling has admitted as much, saying Wart from Sword In The Stone is “Harry’s spiritual ancestor.”>> This is one of the few series where she has actually acknowledged a similarity, although interestingly it’s also one of the few ones where the original creator was dead by the time the H.P series came out (T.H. White died in 1964).
Charmed Life (book, part of the Chrestomanci series)
<< In Diana Wynne Jones’ Charmed Life (1977), two orphaned children receive magical education while living in a castle. The setting is a world resembling early 1900s Britain, where magic is commonplace.
Diana Wynne Jones has stated in answer to a question on her webpage [in 2001]: “I think Ms Rowling did get quite a few of her ideas from my books — though I have never met her, so I have never been able to ask her. My books were written many years before the Harry Potter books (Charmed Life was first published in 1977), so any similarities probably come from what she herself read as a child.” >>
<<She would go on to tell the Guardian in 2003 that she believed JK Rowling had taken inspiration from her. “I think that she [Rowling] read my books as a young person and remembered lots of stuff; there are so many striking similarities,” she said. >> (Independent, 2014 https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/diana-wynne-jones-80th-birthday-google-doodle-celebrates-harry-potter-inspiration-author-s-birthday-9673070.html )
<< The first Chrestomanci novel, Charmed Life, won the 1977 Guardian award for children’s fiction. Wynne Jones’s novels were languishing with a publisher, until they were discovered by HarperCollins, looking for magical tales in the wake of Harry Potter. At the time, Wynne Jones hadn’t even heard of Rowling.
But children reading the reissued Chrestomanci books soon commented on the likeness to Harry Potter: school background to the magic, referring to a character as one who must not be named.
[…] Does she feel certain things got “downloaded”, perhaps? “I feel slightly aggrieved,” she says, “but it happens so easily — one retains something in one’s mind. I would like to ask her about it, but she’s hard to meet […].”>> (Guardian, 2003).
This was 6 years before she was diagnosed with cancer and less than a decade before she died. So this would not have given her time to sue Rowling which would have taken a long time.
<<Dating from long before Harry Potter, this story of young magicians’ adventures still enchants […] Long before Potter, I found joy in the orphan-discovering-they-have-magical-powers trope[...].>> (Guardian)
The book Witch Week (1st published 1982, part of the same series) also has some similarities since it is features witches and wizards, boarding schools, a young bespectacled teenage wizard with a scar of sorts, an elderly wizard guide in some ways similar to Dumbledore …
<< In her four Potter books so far, Rowling has used the formula of the boarding school story and stayed within its constraints.
The setting is not unique — authors like Diana Wynne Jones and Anthony Horowitz have also used it [see later for the Horowitz similarities].
Wynne Jones has been publishing for more than 30 years, and young readers have noted parallels between her books and Rowling’s creations.
The 1982 book Witch Week, part of Wynne Jones’ celebrated Chrestomanci series, features an owlish young hero at a boarding school for children who have suffered from society’s persecution of witches.>> (BBC, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2996578.stm )
<<Witches at a boarding school will inevitably bring Harry Potter to mind, but Witch Week predates J.K. Rowling’s series by 15 years.>> (Vox)
Both of the books are more mature, deal with more complicated issues than Harry Potter which might explain why they didn’t catch on as much.
She was friends with Neil Gaiman (who is also an artist whose produced work that seems to have been ‘copied’ by Rowling) and she also wrote “Howl’s moving Castle” which was adapted into the eponymous Studio Ghibli film.
Diana Wynne Jones died in March 2011, aged 76, from cancer. <<Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009.[25] >>
<<Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009.[29] She underwent surgery in July and reported to friends that the procedure had been successful.[30] However, in June 2010 she announced that she would be discontinuing chemotherapy because it only made her feel ill. In mid-2010 she was halfway through a new book with plans for another to follow.[31] She died on 26 March 2011 from the disease.[1]
Groosham Grange (two book series)
<<There’s also Groosham Grange by Anthony Horowitz published in 1988 [9 years before the 1st Harry Potter] that has a protagonist raised by Abusive Parents who receives a letter from an isolated magic school and befriends a boy and a girl on a magic train. The sequel The Unholy Grail (1999) features a Tournament Arc similar to Goblet of Fire [1st published in 2000].>>
<<A magic train from a regular station takes the students to the wizard boarding-school [which is also a castle that cannot be accessed by normal non-magicians] where the main character befriends a boy and a girl who will then form a trio of friends for the rest of the story, there are talking portraits, a magic mirror as a central plot point, a suspicious teacher stealing a magic cup…>> It also uses the trope of wizards riding broomsticks.
<<Both books feature a teacher who is a ghost, a werewolf character named after the French word for “wolf” (Lupin/Leloup) […]>>
Part of the reason these two books weren’t as successful is that they seem to have been marketed more towards a male and older audience, and therefore would only have had a smaller more limited audience compared to HP which was marketed to both adults and kids.
<<Many of Rowling’s elements also appear in Eleanor Estes’ [died in 1988] The Witch Family, first published in 1960.>> Although that book seems to be aimed at a younger audience.
Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
<<Similarities:
It’s hard to imagine a modern fantasy book that doesn’t owe a great deal to this classic. But there are a few parallels that can’t be ignored.
-Use of rhyming verse to illuminate themes? Check.
-Giant man eating spiders that must be faced by best friends before they have to fight the big bad? Check.
-Occasionally disembodied Dark Lord? Check.
-An evil article of jewelry that not only contains part of the Dark Lord’s soul, but needs to be destroyed to finish him off? Check.
-Creepy sycophant intent on destroying the good guys from the inside (who has worm in his name)? Check.
-Kindly old wizard with a beard who has powers that are only hinted at until revealed explosively? Check.
-Mobile and violent trees? Check.>>
There’s a parallel between the Dementors and the Nazgul:
<<Dementors cause depression and unconsciousness that are dispelled with chocolate.[…] Nazgul cause unconsciousness and utter terror that are dispelled with athelas herb.>>
There are tons more similarities:
<<If you’ve read both Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, you can’t fail to notice how much Rowling draws upon Tolkien,” writes Chris Mooney in a December 2001 issue of The American Prospect.>>
The plots of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the first book in the series, and The Lord of the Rings are broadly parallel.
Wise wizards (Dumbledore in Harry Potter/Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings) mentor and guide the “little” people (children/hobbits) who are short on wisdom but tall on courage. The evil sorcerers (Voldemort/Sauron) are weak in the beginning of the stories and must be prevented from regaining the power they had lost. Voldemort and Sauron attempt to acquire magical objects (the Sorcerer’s Stone/the One Ring) that can make them strong again. Possession of the Sorcerer’s Stone has given Dumbledore’s 666-year-old friend, Nicolas Flamel, the key to immortality; similarly, the One Ring has enabled Gollum, a hobbit, to live for more than 600 years; and Bilbo, the hobbit who acquires the Ring after Gollum loses it, has also lived a longer-than-normal lifespan.
The heroes, the boy wizard Harry and the hobbit Frodo, are both orphans who find themselves in situations in which greatness is thrust upon them. They feel obligated to do the right but difficult thing, rather than what is easy, for the common good. Harry and Frodo play major parts in defeating the villains, although they are not the ones who ultimately destroy the magical objects. Mooney notes in his article that Harry and Frodo suffer from scars as a result of wounds inflicted on them by the enemy. While The Lord of the Rings ends after the Ring is destroyed, Sauron defeated and order reestablished in Middle-earth, the destruction of the Sorcerer’s Stone in Harry Potter only temporarily prevents Voldemort from becoming powerful. Voldemort finds other means of surviving and growing stronger in the other three Harry Potter books that have been published to date.>>
-Butterbur and butterbeer. In The Lord of the Rings, Barliman Butterbur is the bustling, kindly, but forgetful innkeeper of The Prancing Pony, and he serves excellent ale. Rowling may be cleverly playing on Butterbur’s name when she calls the frothy, buttery, non-alcoholic hot drink that the Hogwarts students love “butterbeer.”
-Longbottom Leaf and Neville Longbottom. The hobbits of the Rings trilogy are fond of inhaling “through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf” (see Prologue to The Lord of the Rings). The best variety of pipe-weed is known as Longbottom Leaf. Interestingly, Longbottom is the last name of the boy in Harry Potter whose favorite subject is herbology, and so the association of Neville Longbottom with Longbottom Leaf is especially appropriate.
-Villains Anonymous. The villains of both fantasies are often referred to indirectly, as if they are too terrifying to name. Boromir and his brother Faramir, valiant men from Gondor, call Sauron “him that we do not name.” Other men of Gondor sometimes call Sauron The Nameless One. Most wizards in Harry Potter refer to Voldemort as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or You-Know-Who.
-Wormtongue and Wormtail. Wormtongue, the deceitful advisor to King Theoden, is really serving Saruman, the good-wizard-gone-bad in The Lord of the Rings. Wormtongue’s counterpart in Harry Potter is Wormtail, or Peter Pettigrew, the wizard who betrayed Harry’s parents to Voldemort. Peter is nicknamed Wormtail because he can transform himself into a rat. Until his true identity is discovered in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he has been in hiding as Harry’s friend Ron’s pet rat, Scabbers.
In spite of their treachery, both Wormtongue and Wormtail’s lives are spared by the good characters. Calling Wormtongue “a snake,” Gandalf says, “To slay it would be just,” but he advises King Theoden to let Wormtongue go free. Wormtongue sets off to join Saruman. Toward the end of The Return of the King, Frodo again shows mercy to Wormtongue, telling him he need not follow Saruman. However, when Saruman kicks Wormtongue in the face, Wormtongue finally snaps and retaliates by killing Saruman. In Harry Potter, Wormtail would have been killed by two adult wizards, Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, if Harry had not intervened. Harry believes his father would not have wanted them to kill Wormtail. Harry thinks it would be best to have Wormtail sent to the wizard prison, Azkaban. Just as Harry and the other wizards are taking Wormtail to Dumbledore, Wormtail escapes. Wormtail finds Voldemort and becomes his servant again. Will Wormtail have something to do with Voldemort’s downfall in the end?
-Old Man Willow and the Whomping Willow. There are willow trees that are very much alive in both fantasies. Old Man Willow in Tolkien’s trilogy actually swallows the hobbit, Pippin, has another hobbit, Merry, in a tight grip, and tips Frodo into the water after lulling him to sleep. The equivalent in Harry Potter is the Whomping Willow in the Forbidden Forest that swings its branches wildly and tosses anything in its path. Once, Harry and Ron arrive at Hogwarts in a flying car, and it is caught in the Whomping Willow, with disastrous results. Rowling gives her willow tree a greater significance: The tree was planted to hide the secret entrance to a tunnel leading to a house used by the wizard Lupin when he has his monthly transformations into a werewolf.
-Black Riders and Dementors. Mooney likens Voldemort to a Black Rider, but I see the Dementors in Harry Potter as closer in likeness to the Black Riders because they are hooded, cloaked figures who inspire fear. The Black Riders or Ringwraiths were once kings who became corrupted when Sauron gave them rings of power. They appear to be both material and immaterial, capable of physically as well as psychologically attacking their enemies.
It is uncertain as of the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, what the Dementors actually look like, although Harry once caught sight of a hideous, decaying hand under the cloak of a Dementor. The Dementors are the guards of Azkaban; they have the power to suck the souls out of the prisoners by giving them the kiss of death.
-Shelob and Aragog. In Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Bilbo saved his dwarven companions from giant spiders in the forest of Mirkwood. The Lord of the Rings features a giant, ancient spider named Shelob that feeds on any living thing that comes her way. Frodo is stung by Shelob, and Sam valiantly battles Shelob alone. In Harry Potter, Harry and Ron meet spiders in the Forbidden Forest whose king, Aragog, resembles Shelob in size and appetite for flesh. Ron’s fear of spiders had been established, and this incident tests his bravery. Aragog would have fed Harry and Ron to his spider kindred, but the boys narrowly escape.
-The Use of Mirrors:
Mirrors are used as means of revelation in both fantasies. The Mirror of Galadriel is “a basin of silver, wide and shallow,” which the Lady Galadriel fills with water. After breathing upon the basin, she invites Frodo and Sam to look into it so that events in the past, somewhere else in the present, or future may be revealed to them. They take turns looking and are disturbed by what they see. They do not fully comprehend the events revealed until they experience these events later.
In Harry Potter, Harry discovers the Mirror of Erised and is drawn to it because it shows him his parents smiling and waving at him. The mirror looks like a regular mirror, but it reveals Harry’s deepest longing — to be with his parents. In a poignant moment, Dumbledore draws Harry away from the mirror, telling him gently, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live . . .”
Rowling introduces another device in the fourth book, called a “Pensieve,” that reveals events in the past. The Pensieve is a “shallow stone basin,” and Harry sees a “bright, whitish silver” substance in it. The shape and color of the Pensieve and its contents are reminiscent of the Mirror of Galadriel. Harry is drawn to the Pensieve while he is alone in Dumbledore’s office, and he finds himself “falling” into it when he peers closely at it. He is transported in time to a different place and witnesses some significant events. Later, Dumbledore explains to Harry that when his head is too crammed with thoughts and memories, he uses the Pensieve to collect his excess thoughts in order to examine them at leisure some other time. Dumbledore then demonstrates how he siphons his thoughts into the Pensieve.
“The Mark of Tolkien”
The similarities of images, characters and names between Rowling and Tolkien’s fantasies in the examples mentioned seem to be more than just coincidence, but most authors draw upon other authors’ ideas. […] Rowling appears to have borrowed some of Tolkien’s ideas and names but altered them to suit her tale.
“I do not think any modern writer of epic fantasy has managed to escape the mark of Tolkien, no matter how hard many of them have tried,” says Shippey. That seems true of Rowling, although given the combined lengths of the Harry Potter books so far, the references to Tolkien form a relatively small number, and much of what Rowling has written is unparalleled. Copyright 2002 by Caroline Monroe
Bibliography
Mooney, Chris. “Tolkien on Homeland Defense and Why He’s More Like J. K. Rowling than Christians Admit.” The American Prospect Online. December 4, 2001.
Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Great Britain: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966. >>
From: http://greenbooks.theonering.net/guest/files/050102.html
<<Fans of author J. R. R. Tolkien have drawn attention to the similarities between his novel The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series;[35] specifically Tolkien’s Wormtongue and Rowling’s Wormtail, Tolkien’s Shelob and Rowling’s Aragog, Tolkien’s Gandalf and Rowling’s Dumbledore, Tolkien’s Nazgûl and Rowling’s Dementors, Old Man Willow and the Whomping Willow and the similarities between both authors’ antagonists, Tolkien’s Dark Lord Sauron and Rowling’s Lord Voldemort (both of whom are sometimes within their respective continuities unnamed due to intense fear surrounding their names; both often referred to as ‘The Dark Lord’; and both of whom are, during the time when the main action takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat).[36]
Several reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows noted that the locket used as a horcrux by Voldemort bore comparison to Tolkien’s One Ring, as it negatively affects the personality of the wearer.[37] Rowling maintains that she had not read The Hobbit until after she completed the first Harry Potter novel (though she had read The Lord of the Rings as a teenager) and that any similarities between her books and Tolkien’s are “Fairly superficial. Tolkien created a whole new mythology, which I would never claim to have done. On the other hand, I think I have better jokes.”[38] >>
The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper
<< Similarities: This fantasy series about the battle between light and dark and wages across five books and includes elements of everything from Saxon folklore to Arthurian legend. You bet it’s similar to HP. There are magical objects to find, including an ancient magical sword (which glows blue when near evil, in a nod to Tolkien). There’s an eleven-year-old boy who discovers on his birthday that he is in fact a wielder of powerful magic. There’s poetry about the plot. And also plenty of evil to defeat!>>
So You Want to Be a Wizard? By Diane Duane
The first book in the series, Young Wizards, was published in 1983.
<<Similarities: Bullied children turn to magic to sort out their problems, inadvertently causing more. There’s a wizarding council and objects that come to life. And it’s got a book called, “The Book Which Is Not Named.”
Also, dragons.>> There is also notably a magic portal in a train station.
<<Some people seem to think that Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books are ripoffs of Harry Potter, when actually Diane Duane began publishing her books in the early ’80s. […] the reprints of the books have often been marketed as “something to read after you’ve finished Harry Potter.” Duane has actually stated on her blog that she avoids reading the Harry Potter books in case anyone accuses her of ripping off Rowling’s ideas for her latest books. The same has happened with the works of Diana Wynne Jones [Charmed Life, Witch Week and others in the series], Susan Cooper [The dark is rising], and other young adult fantasy authors whose books went out of print for a while [disputable, some of them weren’t out of print] but experienced a resurgence in popularity after Harry Potter became a big hit, even though their books existed decades before Rowling began writing.>> [TvTropes]
Wizard’s Hall by Jane Yolen (book)
<<Many people think that Wizard’s Hall by Jane Yolen was ripped-off of Harry Potter despite being written six years earlier. Yes it has a wizard’s school as its main setting, but the characters are much weirder… in only the best ways.>>
<<In 1991, the author Jane Yolen released a book called Wizard’s Hall, to which the Harry Potter series bears a resemblance. The main protagonist, Henry (also called Thornmallow), is a young boy who joins a magical school for young wizards.[87] At the school “he must fulfill an ancient prophecy and help overthrow a powerful, evil wizard.”[88] However, Yolen has stated that “I’m pretty sure she never read my book,” attributing similarities to commonly-used fantasy tropes.[89] In an interview with the magazine Newsweek, Yolen said, “I always tell people that if Ms. Rowling would like to cut me a very large check, I would cash it.”[90] Yolen stopped reading Harry Potter after the third book, and has expressed dislike for the writing style of Harry Potter, calling it “fantasy fast food”.[90][91] >>
<<Yolen also told an audience at WorldCon that lots of other books are derivative, too, but many of them are better written than the Potter novels in her view.>>
<< “We were both using fantasy tropes — the wizard school, the pictures on the wall that move. I happen to have a hero whose name was Henry, not Harry. He also had a red-headed best friend and a girl who was also his best friend — though my girl was black, not white. [Ironic considering Rowling’s later claims on how Hermione could always have been black even though she is described as having white skin in the text] And there was a wicked wizard who was trying to destroy the school, who was once a teacher at the school. But those are all fantasy tropes … There’s even a book that came out way before hers where children go off to a witch school or a wizard school by going on a mysterious train that no one else can see except the kids, at a major British train station — I don’t know if it was Victoria Station or King’s Cross. These things are out there … This is not new.” >> [From a 2013 Wired interview]
Roald Dahl’s books including Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well as their respective film adaptations
<<Many have drawn attention to the similarities between Rowling’s works and those of Roald Dahl, particularly in the depiction of the Dursley family, which echoes the nightmarish guardians seen in many of Dahl’s books, such as the Wormwoods from Matilda, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker from James and the Giant Peach, and Grandma from George’s Marvellous Medicine.[40] Rowling acknowledges that there are similarities, but believes that at a deeper level, her works are different from those of Dahl; in her words, more “moral”.[41]>> [Wikipedia]
<< Anyway those Dursley characters, that spoiled fat kid right out of a Roald Dahl book — he wrote The BFG and James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In fact Rowling’s set-ups and people are much like James and the Giant Peach.
Julian: Also scenes in that dark forest seem like Tolkien >> http://www.locusmag.com/2001/Reviews/Shirley_HarryPotter.html
The Matilda book was first published in 1988 and the film (directed, narrated and starring Danny DeVito) is from 1996 which is from before the first Harry Potter book was even published (1997).
In both Matilda and the first Harry Potter book, a young British child who is mistreated by their family and discovers that they seem to have supernatural abilities at around age 11, end up at a school with some good teachers who help them and mentor and others who treat them badly seemingly for no reason.
As many people have pointed out “Matilda’s basic plot is if Hermione from Harry Potter had instead been raised by the Dursley’s”.
<<Harry’s aunt Marjorie Dursley is played by the same actress [Pam Ferris] who plays Miss Trunchbull in Matilda.>>
In The Twits and in at least one other book by Dahl there are monkeys called Muggle-Wump and whose family is sometimes called the Muggle-Wumps. This seems to be from the British slang word “muggle” (which predates Harry Potter).
Much of the descriptions of magical food in the Harry Potter franchise are reminiscent of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it also features the main plot-line of a young child being taken out of poverty when he receives a special piece of paper that allows him to go to an incredible fantastical place that only a select few can access. There he is greeted by an elderly eccentric who takes him under his wing.
Young Sherlock Holmes (film)
<<or Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Fear, to give its original, Potter-esque, script title).>>
<< Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter film adaptations, has cited the 1985 film Young Sherlock Holmes, which he wrote, as an influence in his direction for those films. “That was sort of a predecessor to this movie, in a sense”, he told the BBC in 2001, “It was about two young boys and a girl in a British boarding school who had to fight a supernatural force.”[74] Scenes from Young Sherlock Holmes were subsequently used to cast the first Harry Potter film.[75] On 3 January 2010, Irish journalist Declan Lynch (writing in The Sunday Independent) stated that “there’s more than a hint of young Sherlock evident in Harry”.[76] >>
<<[Columbus] came to London during the making of the film Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), which he wrote. “That was sort of a predecessor to this movie, in a sense,” says the Pennsylvania-born director. “It was about two young boys and a girl in a British boarding school who had to fight a supernatural force.”>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1651592.stm
<<Hirshenson’s company has been screening child actors under the guise of casting for a Young Sherlock Holmes film. In actuality, scenes were picked from Chris Columbus’ 1985 script for Young Sherlock Holmes, and were distributed to agents around the US, calling for actors with “Harry-like” characteristics.
In fact, scenes from the Holmes script that were selected closely parallel some of the scenes from the Potter story. For instance, a scene was selected where Holmes and Watson first meet. This is an obviously parallel to the scene on the train where Harry and Ron first get to know each other.>> https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/07/11/trouble-brewing-with-potter-casting
For a more in-depth breakdown with references to specific scenes, see: https://harryholmes.blogspot.com/
<<In an English boarding school housed within a gothic castle, where students dine and whisper among long candlelit tables set in great halls, three young students — two boys and a girl — are drawn together to solve a mystery involving the dark arts. One of the boys, the leader, is already infamous among his classmates, destined for great things; he draws the ire of an icy-blond rich kid who becomes his easily bested foe. The other is a reluctant adventurer, although he is unflappably loyal and a reliable source of comic relief. They’re mentored by a lovable bearded eccentric, though the adults who scoff at their investigations force them to become self-reliant, snooping around libraries and crowded shops for clues. They do battle with various ghostly apparitions, and eventually, it is revealed that one of their professors, in service to a dark master, was the villain all along. Along the way, this preternaturally gifted boy at story’s centre meets his arch nemesis, taking his first step along a path of lifelong adventure.
I’m hardly the first to note that Harry Potter bears more than a few resemblances to 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes, a theory that has been suggested over the years with varying levels of accusatory tone. Even the creator of Young Sherlock Holmes, screenwriter Chris Columbus, has admitted as much, calling it a “sort of a predecessor to this movie, in a sense” while discussing his direction of 2001’s Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone.
[…]
Young Sherlock Holmes’ ambitions are plain, right down to its similarly ahead-of-its-time use of a post-credits stinger to set up a future instalment. On paper, by now we should be groaning about Columbus milking the cow with yet another Young Sherlock Holmes sequel (one that’s a “soft reboot”), and trading joking references to that shitty third one where we learn how Holmes became a coke addict. Instead, the film was a flop, outshone by an atypically crowded year for rollicking adventures. >> https://www.avclub.com/young-sherlock-holmes-was-harry-potter-before-harry-pot-1823846852
<<A lot of running to the library to figure out what teachers and detectives won’t tell them, and Holmes is the most famous kid in class, whose rival is the rich, pompous Dudley [an antagonist with such a name seems like a surprising similarity], every bit the Malfoy look alike. His hair is even died ice blond as Holmes’ revenge. The young Watson, who looks too much like Potter, is called a Weasel at one point, and his character works like that of Ron Weasley, comic relief, loyal buddy, and always trying to get out of adventure.>>
<<Magic, in the form of hallucinations, is the staple of the film. Many of the scenes are set as they would be on Harry Potter–including an identical Great Hall scene, though cramped>>
<<its screenwriter was Chris Columbus, more lately of Harry Potter directing fame. The similarities between both are incredibly striking, not just the public-school setting, but the dynamics of the central character triangle. A protagonist with exceptional talents, a dunderheaded best friend and a gutsy girl along for the ride is almost an exact match (though Cox’s Watson physically resembles Harry Potter more).>> https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/14/my-favourite-film-aged-12-young-sherlock-holmes
There have been allegations that Chris Columbus was hired for the 1st Harry Potter film as part of some agreement. Steven Spielberg was initially planned (Spielberg was also involved in making Young Sherlock Holmes including via his production company Amblin Entertainment) but eventually dropped out.
Even the name Harry Potter for a young teenager in a magical fantasy world isn’t original
<<While we’re on the subject, the 1986 horror movie Troll contains a young boy named Harry Potter (played by Noah “Atreyu” Hathaway) who enters a world of magic, befriends a witch, and fights a troll. >>
<<They argue both stories have witches, wizards and magic, a young hero named Harry Potter dressed in a plaid shirt, an old woman who gives Harry advice and an evil villain who hides his essence in someone close to Harry[…]>>
This is very similar to the first book. There are also visual similarities, such as the way the teenagers are dressed.
<<While the Harry Potter logo is trademarked by Warner Bros., the name itself cannot be trademarked.>>
<<J.K. Rowling’s first book, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” was first published in 1997. Warner Bros. bought the film rights in 1999.>>
Small indie creators would be unlikely to win a lawsuit against such a large corporation as Warner Bros.
Through the Looking Glass (book) by Lewis Carroll
<<Similarities: The living chess game.
The live chess pieces in Through the Looking Glass and the magicked ones in Sorcerer’s Stone are just so much alike.>>
The design of the wizard chess pieces in the films ones are not original but are a copy of a real set, called the Lewis Chessmen, that exists in the British Museum.
Other elements that are not original:
As mentioned earlier, the concept of boarding schools with different houses that compete for points was not invented by Rowling but is found in some English schools.
<< The Horcruxes from the Harry Potter universe are seemingly random, ordinary items in which the Big Bad has hidden part of his soul — permanently destroying him is impossible unless you first destroy all seven of these items. The idea goes back to the concept of the Lich (undead, skeletal magician of vast power) and his phylactery from Dungeons & Dragons, and that presumably goes back to Russian folklore and the character of Koschei the Deathless (an undead, skeletal magician of vast power), who hid his soul in a needle, and put the needle in an egg, and the egg in a bird, and the bird in a hare, and the hare in a bear, etc. etc, Russian-doll style. This is even found in Classical Mythology with characters such as Meleager (not the Heroic Age one) whose life was linked to a wooden brand: when the brand was consumed by fire, Meleager died. >>
<<There actually are people who think Rowling invented house elves, hippogriffs, or the concept of familiars. This despite the fact that the wizards’ pets in the Harry Potter series are clearly just pets (albeit sometimes with unusual abilities), not familiars as such>>.
The general theme and concept of hijinks in a boarding school was nothing new:
<<The Harry Potter series is often accused of being a rip-off of the Greyfriars series (Billy Bunter et al).>>
Other older stories about students getting into trouble in a British boarding school: << Stalky & Co. stories, which in turn could be said to be descended from Tom Brown’s Schooldays. >>
<<Similarly, many people accuse Discworld’s Unseen University of being a Hogwarts ripoff, and have pointed out that Ponder Stibbons looks an awful lot like the Potter kid. While Terry Pratchett does bury references to all sorts of things in the Discworld novels, and encourages fans to try and find them, this one is just plain untrue. See the quote on the main page for Pratchett’s exact word on the subject. To be absolutely clear: Unseen University first appeared in 1983, and Ponder Stibbons debuted in 1990. Meanwhile, the first Harry Potter novel wasn’t published until 1997 — hence Pratchett’s time travel jibe in response to the criticism:
“I, of course, used a time machine to ‘get the idea’ of Unseen University from Hogwarts; I don’t know what Paul [Kidby, the illustrator] used in this case. Obviously he must have used something.” >>
This goes to show how the young boy-wizard who goes to a magic school trope was common enough that it could be parodied.
<< As soon as the Harry Potter boom began, journalists who hadn’t read a children’s book in years went “Wow, a wizards’school! Wow, broomstick lessons! “ and so on, and generally acted as though the common property of the genre was the entire invention of JKR. This continues, sometimes quite ridiculously. And now we have Groomsman’s ‘knights and ladies Morris dancing to Greensleeves’ With such an easy wave we can dismiss, oh, Ursula leGuin, Diana Wynn Jones, Jane Yolen, [all three mentionned in this post] Peter Dickinson, Alan Garner…fill in the list.
Pointing this out is, apparently, an attack on JKR. I don’t have any problem at all with her rise, only with such third-party silliness such as the above, which insults good authors who wrote great books at a time, not long ago, when advances were always low and hype was unknown.
[…]
I will pick up on the comments about Tiffany Aching and ‘the school for witches’. As he Discworld take on Witch v. Wizard magic has been in place for a very long time. Tiffany’s daydream of a magical school’ *could *be Hogwarts — or Unseen University or Miss Cackle’s Academy [also mentioned in this compilation] or any fantasy school or all or none. >> (Terry Pratchett, 2005, https://www.beyondhogwarts.com/story.20050802.html )
This shows how similar the Harry Potter universe is to some previous works, Terry Pratchett also finds that Harry Potter is very similar to those works.
Rowling’s lawsuits against others who ‘copied‘ her or infringed on her copyright
- She sued Dmitri Yemets for Tanya Grotter.
And yet none of the names in the series are the same, no sentences are the same. It incorporates many elements of Russian folklore, that are completely absent from Harry Potter. The main character is a girl who looks nothing like Harry Potter and the series is arguably a better feminist work than Harry Potter.
If simply having general plot elements be similar is enough then plenty of other people have a case against her.
Because of her it is banned in Europe, which is hypocritical when she complained when libraries and book stores didn’t want to have her books (which is simply their right, she can’t force them to buy her books and they didn’t try to get her books banned in most of a continent by suing her).
- She also tried to sue RDR Books to stop them from publishing Steven Vander Ark’s The Harry Potter Lexicon. Orson Scott Card criticised her decision and pointed out how frivolous her lawsuit. I feel that he raises good points on the issue, such as the general similarities between Ender’s Game and Harry Potter and although he is a homophobe, that has no relation to the points that he is raising on this particular issue:
<<Can you believe that J.K. Rowling is suing a small publisher because she claims their 10,000-copy edition of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a book about Rowling’s hugely successful novel series, is just a “rearrangement” of her own material.
Rowling “feels like her words were stolen,” said lawyer Dan Shallman.
Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender’s Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling.
A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in mid-air, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.
This paragraph lists only the most prominent similarities between Ender’s Game and the Harry Potter series. My book was published in England many years before Rowling began writing about Harry Potter.I can get on the stand and cry, too, Ms. Rowling, and talk about feeling “personally violated.”
The difference between us is that I actually make enough money from Ender’s Game to be content, without having to try to punish other people whose creativity might have been inspired by something I wrote.
Mine is not the only work that one can charge Rowling “borrowed” from. Check out this piece from a fan site, pointing out links between Harry Potter and other previous works: http://www.geocities.com/versetrue/rowling.htm. […]
It’s true that we writers borrow words from each other, but we’re supposed to admit it and not pretend we’re original when we’re not. I took the word ansible from Ursula K. LeGuin, and have always said so. Rowling, however, denies everything.
If Steven Vander Ark, the author of Lexicon, had written fiction that he claimed was original, when it was actually a rearrangement of ideas taken from the Harry Potter books, then she’d have a case.
But Lexicon is intended only as a reference book for people who have already paid for their copies of Rowling’s books […] it certainly falls within the realm of scholarly comment.
Rowling’s hypocrisy is so thick I can hardly breathe: Prior to the publication of each novel, there were books about them that were no more intrusive than Lexicon. I contributed to one of them, and there was no complaint about it from Rowling or her publishers because they knew perfectly well that these fan/scholar ancillary publications were great publicity and actually boosted sales.
But now the Harry Potter series is over, and Rowling claims that her “creative work” is being “decimated.”
Of course, she doesn’t claim that it’s the Lexicon that is harming her “creative work” (who’s she borrowing from this time?); it’s the lawsuit itself! And since she chose to bring the suit, whose fault is it? If she had left Vander Ark alone to publish his little book and make his little bit of money, she wouldn’t be distracted from her next novel.
But no, Rowling claims Vander Ark’s book “constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work.”
Seventeen years? What a crock. Apparently she includes in that total the timeframe in which she was reading, and borrowing from, the work of other writers.
On the stand, though, Rowling’s chief complaint seems to be that she would do a better job of annotating and encyclopedizing her own series.
So what?
Nothing prevents her from doing exactly that ? annotating and explaining her own novels. Do you think that if there were a Harry Potter Annotated by the Author, Vander Ark’s book would interfere with her sales in any way?
This frivolous lawsuit puts at serious risk the entire tradition of commentary on fiction. Any student writing a paper about the Harry Potter books, any scholarly treatise about it, will certainly do everything she’s complaining about.
Once you publish fiction, Ms. Rowling, anybody is free to write about it, to comment on it, and to quote liberally from it, as long as the source is cited.
Here’s the irony: Vander Ark had the material for this book on his website for years, and Rowling is quoted as saying that when she needed to look up some ‘fact” from her earlier books, she would sometimes “sneak into an Internet cafe while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter.”
In other words, she already had made personal use of Vander Ark’s work and found it valuable. Even if it has shortcomings, she found it useful.
That means that Vander Ark created something original and useful, he added value to the product. If Rowling wants to claim that it interferes with her creativity now, she should have made that complaint back when she was using it, and giving Vander Ark an award for his website back in 2004.
Now, of course, she regrets “bitterly” having given the award.
You know what I think is going on?
Rowling has nowhere to go and nothing to do now that the Harry Potter series is over. After all her literary borrowing, she shot her wad and she’s flailing about trying to come up with something to do that means anything.
Moreover, she is desperate for literary respectability. Even though she made more money than the queen or Oprah Winfrey in some years, she had to see her books pushed off the bestseller lists and consigned to a special “children’s book” list. Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of sub-literature, not really worth discussing.
It makes her insane. The money wasn’t enough. She wants to be treated with respect.
At the same time, she’s also surrounded by people whose primary function is to suck up to her. No doubt some of them were saying to her, “It’s wrong for these other people to be exploiting what you created to make money for themselves.”
She let herself be talked into being outraged over a perfectly normal publishing activity, one that she had actually made use of herself during its web incarnation.
Now she is suing somebody who has devoted years to promoting her work and making no money from his efforts, which actually helped her make some of her bazillions of dollars.
Talent does not excuse Rowling’s ingratitude, her vanity, her greed, her bullying of the little guy, and her pathetic claims of emotional distress.
[…]
It’s like her […] self-serving claim that Dumbledore was gay. She wants credit for being very up-to-date and politically correct, but she didn’t have the guts to put that supposed “fact” into the actual novels, knowing that it might hurt sales.
What a pretentious, puffed-up coward. When I have a gay character in my fiction, I say so right in the book. I don’t wait until after it has had all its initial sales to mention it.
From: http://www.linearpublishing.com/RhinoStory.html
See also:
https://www.wired.com/2008/05/literary-purse/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harry_Potter_Lexicon
She and her lawyers also sued other people and groups:
<< Rowling is hooked up with companies that enforce their (and her) copyright ruthlessly. Recently Dale M. Cendali, attorney for Time Warner, told the press: ‘We’re aggressively going to go after anyone who infringes on Harry Potter.’ Last week the New York Daily News found itself facing a $100M legal action after publishing tiny extracts from the fifth Potter. The claim is that the News ‘damaged’ Rowling’s intellectual property rights and the book’s $3M marketing campaign. Publisher Verso was forced to pulp the covers of a Marxian analysis of Potter, because it featured similar colours to those used for the Potter books themselves. And so on.>> (Guardian, 2003)
In 2003, in an attempt to maintain secrecy over the impending release of the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Rowling and her publishers sought and received a groundbreaking injunction against “the person or persons who has or have physical possession of a copy of the said book or any part thereof without the consent of the Claimants”.[7] The ruling obtained, for the first time in British law, an injunction against unnamed or unknown individuals; before then, injunctions could only be obtained against named individuals.
This created a disturbing precedent in U.K. law, which many criticised.
Lawyers Winterbothams noted that, “The new Harry Potter style injunction could be used if you expected a demonstration or trespass to take place, but which had not yet begun, so long as you could find a description for the people expected which the Court was satisfied identified ‘those who are included and those who are not’”.
-The “Potter injunction” was later used against a camp of Roma travellers.
-In 2006, pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) employed the injunction against anonymous animal rights campaigners who had sent threatening letters to their investors.[66]
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_disputes_over_the_Harry_Potter_series
Some of the sources [excluding the books and other works themselves] in no particular order:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071223193628/www.geocities.com/sayswamp/worst.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20090114072301/http://www.reason.com/news/show/126395.html
(Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20060411074639/http://harryholmes.blogspot.com/ )
