The is the fourth in a HogwartsProfessor series of close-up looks at pictures displayed at JKrowling.com and Robert-Galbraith.com. The first three entries in the series can be found here, here, and here.

Today, perhaps the ultimate in visible literary allusion, we have a stack of five books we are supposed to assume (?) can be found within easy reference reach on Rowling’s writing desk.

What the picture’s url calls a ‘book stack’ includes, top to bottom, a Roget’s thesaurus, A. D. Mills’ Dictionary of English Place Names, Rice’s Architectural Primer, Keaney & Wilson’s Dictionary of English Surnames, and the Oxford World Classics edition of Four Revenge Tragedies. I had a Roget’s (if not this edition) and the OWC Four Revenge Tragedies before Evan Willis showed me how to open up these partially obscured photos on Rowling’s site. I have since acquired the three other books in the stack.

The copy of Four Revenge Tragedies, I have to think dates the photo to the time Galbraith was writing or updating The Silkworm. All four of the tragedies therein are used as sources for chapter epigraphs in what Rowling has said was the first Strike mystery she wrote, although the second one to be published.

The Dictionary of English Surnames has already proven a gold mine for Serious Strikers and Potter Pundits. Beatrice Groves used it to explain Rowling’s choice of ‘Galbraith’ as her pseudonym; Keaney & Wilson define this surname (p 182) as meaning “stranger-Briton” in Old Gaelic, “a name given to Britons settled among Gaels,” an apt description of Rowling-Murray in Edinburgh. I used Groves’ clue about ‘Burkes’ in another of her HogwartsProfessor posts, to find the ‘Borgin’ of the Knockturn Alley shop; in Keaney & Wilson, ‘Burgoin’ is the surname listed immediately before ‘Burk’ and an alternative of ‘Burgin’ is listed there (p. 74). I suspect this Dictionary will be a go-to item for all future Cratylic name searches.

The Roget’s Thesaurus is a gentle reminder that the author is a wordsmith, who beyond not wanting to use the same word repeatedly is wont to find just the right word with the appropriate nuance and shading necessary. Nabokov always wrote with a copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, second edition, at hand. (yes, I own a copy and it is huge). Same thing, sort of.

I have leafed through the Architectural Primer and Dictionary of Place Names but not with a specific task in mind, and, not too surprisingly in consequence, without any finds worth noting. Feel free to click on ‘Leave a Comment’ up by the blogpost title and share any questions you might have, place names to look up, ideas for the Primer as reference; I’ll do my best to pull the reference book ion question and get right back to you!

Universal Studios will be opening a one thousand acre theme park resort in the Tongzhou subcenter district of Beijing in 2021. It will, of course, include the Wizarding World attractions that have been the foundation of Universal’s success with their Orlando, Los Angeles, and Tokyo parks. The largest Universal resort in the world has been the subject of site visits and negotiations between the capitalist corporation and the totalitarian regime in China since 2002. See the China.org.cn announcement, ‘Universal Beijing Resort Annonces 2021 Opening,’ and the SnitchSeekers.com bulletin that includes the breathless excitement of a Comcast Corporation conference call on the subject.

China is the world’s largest market of consumers so I suppose this was inevitable. It is simultaneously as lamentable as any money-making venture must be that supports perhaps the most criminal and dangerous political regime on planet Earth. I know there are few if any White Knight governments in the world today, but the de facto dictatorship in Beijing and 

• their systemic cultural genocide via Han immigration in Tibet,
• their forced labor concentration camps for more than one million Muslims in Xinjiang,
• their continued nation-wide coerced abortion and forced sterilization programs and other crimes against women and children,
• their militarization of the China Sea and waters off the Philippines,
• their Stalinist persecution of Christians and other religious minorities,
• and their Tiananmen Square-esque behaviors in Hong Kong

— make China stand alone and above all other nightmare states in the size and depth of their crimes. Only North Korea, a Chinese puppet government, is even close. Will we see a Pyongyang theme park soon for the ‘Haves’ in the Hermit Kingdom to enjoy?

Shame on Universal Studios for this collaboration, by which they make themselves and their stock holders participants in the crimes committed by the Orwellian regime. 

MinaLima is rolling out a line of Wizarding World themed wallpapers, and frankly, though I am no fan of Harry Potter adaptations or junk marketed to global fandom (Underwear! Toothpaste! Jewelry! Tattoos!), I am impressed by the image quality of this product, it’s non-exploitative price point, and its homage to the English tradition of high grade wallpaper design.

You can see the images on the PotterMore site and at MinaLima.com, from which the pictures in this post have been borrowed. There is a Marauder’s Map, a Black Family tapestry, a Quidditch design for the nursery, and a Wizarding World book covers set for your home library.

The price and size of each roll wasn’t immediately available but Lesley Stevens, long-suffering friend of this weblog who lives near London, responded to my plea for help.

I called the shop, and the wallpaper is £89 per roll, and it is 950mm wide by 10 m long. With a five week lead time, I mentioned that the web links don’t work, and the lady I spoke to laughed and said that the demand had been so great that the Muggle website couldn’t cope, she also suggested that I pop into the shop to have a look at it in reality.

Thank you, Lesley! £89 translated into transatlantic currency is $111.11 US. 950mm is 37 inches, 10m is 393 feet or 33 feet. How does that price compare with other wallpaper rolls in size and price?

An American ‘double roll’ is either 21″ x 33′ or 27″ x 27′ Prices online for patterned paper in double rolls begin at $101. Rolls from Specialty houses like ‘Designer’s Guild’ or ‘Morris’ begin at $111 and go much higher, even three times that.

From this side of the Atlantic, it sounds like MinaLima is not price gouging. It’s pricey, certainly, but not stratospherically so, as much of the upper end Potter memorabilia and marketing trash can be. What they charge for shipping from their London and Osaka shops, heaven knows.

I like this new offer for two reasons. First, it brings up memory of the wallpaper in my brother Steve’s bedroom in our childhood home. My parents papered it with a design akin to MinaLima’s Wizarding World media headlines but this one was made up of Chicago Tribune front pages from the early and mid 20th century. I used to sneak into Steve’s bedroom when he wasn’t at home and just read the walls.

And then there are the echoes of William Morris in the MinaLima natural designs. In addition to being one of the more important first contributors to the English high fantasy literary tradition (Tolkien was strongly and positively influenced by both Morris’ literary and artistic accomplishments), Morris was the leader of the Arts and Crafts movement in 19th Century England. He founded ‘Morris and Company,’ still very much a going concern, to market his intricate wallpaper designs and to facilitate the high craftsmanship of his manufacturing methods.

Harry Potter wallpaper, in other words, especially those rolls with obvious Morris-inspired designs seems especially apt both as a fun thing of beauty for the Serious Readers home as well as a tribute to the link between art, literature, and daily life that Morris forged in everything he created.

Your thoughts? Click on ‘Leave a Comment’ by the subject line above and let me know what you think!

 

The picture above is from the bottom left corner of J. K. Rowling’s website, most of which image is just out of sight. Using the method described in the two previous ‘Hidden Photos’ HogwartsProfessor posts, there it is. But what is it? What is in this stack of pictures?

The url for the image labels the picture “Report” but that doesn’t quite cover it. There is a a report card for her daughter Mackenzie, but the top of the stack is a brochure called ‘Places around Melrose’ and beneath it there are two items, a ‘Captivating Scents’ brochure and an illustrated book(?). There is also what looks to be a wooden mouse toy in the lower left and a chevron shaped cartoon character (a pin?) on the report card.

The village of Melrose, of course, features in Career of Evil so that is no surprise or mystery.

The report card is a nice touch because it serves as a reminder that J. K. Rowling, writer and philanthropist, is also Joanne Murray, mother and center of the universe to three young people.

The ‘Captivating Scents’ brochure can be read en toto online here. It’s from the Chelsea Physic Garden, the “oldest botanical garden in London” that is home to “more than 5,000 plants.” I’m not sure if this remarkable location is a model for the Herbology classrooms at Hogwarts (check out their “Historic Glasshouses“), a place to expect Cormoran or Robin to visit soon in the Strike mysteries, or both.

I don’t recognize the cartoon figure on the Progress Report, the wooden mouse, or the book cover (?) underneath the pile. Please share your ideas about them or your explanations or interpretations of the visible items by clicking on ‘Leave a Comment’ in the subject line above and writing out your thoughts!