Is a ‘new Harry Potter book’ about to be discovered?

If publishers can turn Harper Lee’s original manuscript into a new novel, could the same happen to JK Rowling’s early drafts?

JK Rowling Photo: ANDREW MONTGOMERY

By Alice Vincent, Arts Writer

The Telegraph - 07 Mar 2015

In February, the literary world was astounded by the news that Harper Lee, the famously reclusive writer of just one novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, was to publish another book.

The new novel, Go Set A Watchman, will be published from an unedited manuscript found in a bank vault that Lee’s sister Alice looked after until the latter's death in November last year.

Now a bibliography of JK Rowling’s work between 1997 and 2013 has shed light on the way in which her record-breaking Harry Potter series came to be published, including information on edits, drafts and earlier manuscripts.

Rowling has said in the past that “the first few pages” she ever wrote of her debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, “bear no resemblance to anything in the finished book.”

However Philip W. Errington’s new book, JK Rowling, A Bibliography, shows that further work had to be done on the manuscript that Rowling’s agent, Christopher Little, submitted to publishers. He states that “Rowling accepted the publisher’s criticism that [The Philosopher’s Stone] was ‘overlong’ and the text was pruned by Bloomsbury’s editorial process.” 

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