Thoughts for the Serious Reader of Harry Potter
The Four ‘Lake’ Pillars of understanding Jo Rowling, the Seven Shed Tools she uses, the Twelve golden Threads — Nick Jeffery and I launched our month long series of Lake and Shed readings on 1 July last year with the engaging introduction above.
Enjoy!
Rowling’s Twitter page header is going through some turnover. Last week we were treated to a statue of Robert Raikes:
Read about that at Farting Sofa. Yesterday? A picture of Freud’s desk at the Freud Museum in London:
New picture, new cameo, the latter with The Presence sporting some new Potter-esque specs — or are the round glasses and pensive look a pointer to the round glasses on Freud’s desk and the couch in his office? Is that the look of a Freudian analyst or analysand?
That’s one crowded desk. You can read about the desk and a few of its pieces here, again from the Freud Museum. A clearer shot of the statuettes he looked to for inspiration while writing and speaking with patients:
There’s been a book written about this Garden of Idols in miniature. The video produced for the book launch has an even better view of the desk top collection:
I’m really not into the Twitter header Hunt-for-Clues game. It’s an over-crowded field and, frankly, it’s a little demeaning to be salivating and meditating over each new breadcrumb that Rowling-Galbraith has dropped from her table in playful fan servicing.
That being said, here are my obligatory three thoughts, oblivious to what fandom has already revealed about Rowling’s relationship with the desk. I ask your forgiveness in advance for my cluelessness if the Twitterati among Serious Strikers have already broken the code on this header.
First, in that menagerie of gods, goddesses, and jade Chinese screens, there is a lot of Eros, seven statues if you’re counting. Venus rates another four. One might think that Freud was a Jungian (ho!) or upset the Jungians by noting that Carl was certainly a Freudian, albeit one one in-recovery for the greater part of his life.
Second, the obvious idea about Freud’s desk appearing in the inter librum period before Strike 9 is that we’re going to make a trip to the Freud Museum sometime in Sleep Tight, Evangeline (it’s in London) or meet a Freudian. Pretty clear candidate for that, right?
Ever since the publication of Hallmarked Man in which Robin asks Prudence to recommend a psychologist for help with her disintegrating mental state, it’s been my working assumption that Dr Donleavey, a Jungian analyst, recommended another Jungian analyst. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe the full-spectrum Prudence urged Robin to consult with a Freudian psychoanalyst. The swearing makes sense if that’s the case as well as the direct approach Prudence says she’s noted for.
Third and last, why the quick turnover in Twitter headers? I have no idea. Well, that’s not true; I have an idea but it’s pretty silly.
Louise Freeman Davis concluded a post early yesterday with the note, “Wouldn’t it be cool if Dr. Broccoli is a Jungian like Prudence and actually talks with Robin about alchemy?” I commented, “I share your hope that Robin’s analyst ‘goes there’ in Strike 9.” And almost instantly Rowling posted the picture of Freud’s desk.
Correlation meaning causation, voila, cause and effect: Rowling wanted us to know that we were way off track and moved her posting of Freud’s desk up on her marketing-breadcrumb-posting queue to send the message post haste.
I suspect that Rowling may have posted the new header before I was sent word about it (5 PM US Eastern Time) which of course would blow up any possibility that my absurd conjecture, whose premises include one about Team Rowling following Strike fandom postings closely, is true. But it was a seeming fun-coincidence synchronicity.
Analyze all that, please, in the comment boxes below.
A new biography of J. K. Rowling is badly needed. J.K. Rowling: A Biography by Sean Smith provides an accessible, heavily detailed, but structurally simplistic look at the author’s meteorological rise. First published in 2001, Sean Smith’s unauthorized account focuses deeply on the trials and tribulations Rowling faced before finding global success with Harry Potter. Because his work functions as a time capsule from the very beginning of her career, it misses more than two decades of monumental shifts in her professional and personal life.
My copy of Smith’s book bears the dents and battle scars of being hurled across the room when the reference I’m looking for proves to be missing or inaccurate. There are some howlers such as the lower second class honours that Rowling gained at Exeter are translated into an incomprehensible (for British readers) 2.2 Grade Point Average, and Rowling’s parents being posted to a Commando base at Arbroath (as it is now), not the Royal Naval Air Station technical training base (as it was then).
As John Granger pointed out when the new biography by Solomon Schmidt was announced, he is very young, and his publisher seems to specialise in controversial books by, among others, Woody Allen, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. This lefty socialist was not filled with confidence. Although Mr Schmidt sent me a very polite mail, I didn’t engage with him.
My reticence seemed to be confirmed when stories were placed in the gutter press to drum up publicity for the new book:
National Enquirer: J. K. Rowling’s Dad Sold Signed ‘Harry Potter’ Copy After She ‘Told Him to Go Pound Sand’
New York Post: JK Rowling’s father ‘ran illegal cannabis operation’ from secret cellar in house
In the later article Rowling’s cousin Ben is quoted as saying “When Pete was visiting me at one point in 1997, he told me that over the previous few years, he had been one of the largest growers of marijuana in South West England and Wales”. As someone who was a young man in Wales in 1997, I can confirm you would need a fair size farm to be one of the largest growers in the South West, not a few square feet of cold store designed to keep milk cool, when Church Cottage was a schoolhouse.
My worst fears seemingly confirmed, I was surprised when Solomon offered me a copy to review ahead of the publication at the end of June. The copy was electronic so I couldn’t even have the satisfaction of hurling it across the room…
In order to give A Pen to Change the World a fair review, I gave myself the following criteria, any one of which would be a valuable addition to the Rowling literature. If it fails all three tests, then save your money:
A Pen to Change the World is wonderfully comprehensive, with material that has been made available after the Smith biography, woven cleverly into the narrative both pre and post Potter. All of the sources are included in an appendix of some 91 pages and referenced to each line and page of the biography. Solomon did not need to do this; most writers would have been happy with the five-page bibliography and links to extensive article and AV citations. What this does provide is an invaluable tool for researchers. A source list presented in a chronology of J. K. Rowling’s life, that will save very much time for anyone interested in looking for biographical reflections in Rowling’s works.
There are some surprising omissions. The astrological duo Starsky and Cox, that J. K. met and befriended during her year in Paris do not get a mention. But these are very few and far between, and I do bear in mind that the Hogwarts Professor interest in Rowling’s astrology might be somewhat niche.
It is Solomon’s credit that I could tell from the text what his politics biases might be. As a social minded liberal, what in the UK is called a centrist, in the later chapters there are parts of the biography I found troubling. I feel confident that would be true for everyone, no matter their political persuasion, because wherever a conflict is discussed, the author has presented both sides neutrally, and in the protagonist’s own voice.
***** Neutral, comprehensive and excellently sourced.
Although the biography is unauthorised by J. K. Rowling herself, Solomon Schmidt has gained access to some well-known names in Rowling’s life: Jorge Arantes, Barry Cunningham (the publisher who signed J. K. Rowling to Bloomsbury), Steve Eddy (Rowling’s English teacher), Ben Rowling and Bryony Rowling.
The revelations published in the press, at the time of writing, have come from the last two. Ben and Bryony are her American cousins, and their stories seem to be presented honestly. Where there are discrepancies with the possible (I’m wording this delicately) this could be due to the fanciful reminiscences of childhood or the hyperbole of Peter over a few drinks. I find it likely that Peter did grow marijuana, but it would only be enough for home consumption (perhaps initially to alleviate Anne’s symptoms of MS) and perhaps for a few friends in the Pub.
For students of J. K. Rowling’s lake there are a few more revelations that I have agreed not to mention prior to publication, but I eagerly look forward to discussing after that time.
**** New information has been published, and while I don’t think there is anything there to set the world on fire, Solomon is to be congratulated for finding what he has.
This book is beautifully written. For the first few chapters I tried to keep track of the source material by keeping the book open to the appendix on one table while reading the text with another but abandoned this to concentrate on the story. The prose complements the shades of light and dark without being overly intrusive. A few times Solomon inserts some sentences to evoke the time and place without it appearing padded. In fact, the straightforward style can appear sparse at times but helps what is a very complex life clip along at pace. Uniquely, this biography has made it to my to-be-re-read list and not just as a reference volume.
***** A wonderfully written story, that works as a very immersive read.
I have no hesitation in recommending this book to any Rowling fans and scholars. In fact, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good story well told. The importance of A Pen to Change the World to future scholars is thanks to its voluminous citations, new references to never before documented interviews and scrupulous impartiality. The reason for it to likely enjoy widespread popularity will be down to J. K. Rowling being one of the centuries great lives. It is a life that deserves a biography of the standard of Solomon Schmidt. 5/5 Stars
MuggleNet.com is, with The Leaky Cauldron and The Harry Potter Lexicon, one of the few Harry Potter fandom websites with an international following and more than a quarter century of reporting, commenting on, and celebrating everything to do with the Wizarding World. These sites were daily stops from Generation Hex during Potter Mania, 1999 – 2012, the years the books and first film film adaptations appeared.
In July 2020 with the advent of the Trans Wars, however, MuggleNet broke with Rowling, Inc., with which entity they had previously served as an unpaid marketing extension, in fidelity to their beliefs that human beings can become the other sex by believing they are. MuggleNet made this move, all but declaring the author of the Harry Potter series ‘She Who Must Not Be Named’ on their site’s posts and podcasts, by linking arms in a brotherly boycott with every other fandom site (except this one and The Rowling Library).
The difference in those closed ranks, though, was that the founder of MuggleNet, Emerson Spartz, had sold his website in 2020 to Topix Media Lab, a magazine and paperback book publisher that had already been printing Potter titles with MNet cooperation for years. The new owners oversaw a reformatting of the site and published a wave of new book titles but for the most part retained its staff of many years, most of which were technically volunteers, and its large archive of posts and podcasts.
In September 2025, though, Topix decided to clean house and start over. They fired everybody and in April 2026 wiped the site clean of its past. As The Leaky Cauldron’s ‘Amanda Kirk’ wrote last week in a piece titled ‘MuggleNet Has Become a Horcrux:’
In 2020, the site changed ownership to a company, Topix Media Lab, that had been in partnership with MN for its print publications. For some years after the sale, operations at the site appeared similar from the outside, albeit with a seemingly bigger push for ad revenue by Topix. In September 2025, Topix emailed MN staff to inform them that their services were no longer required. Staff numbers had fluctuated but some had remained dedicated to MN for nearly 20 years. Unless the owners planned to shut down MN, why abruptly dismiss all that institutional knowledge and devotion? The mystery deepened when Topix posted an ad on LinkedIn looking for a single full-time paid staff member to run the site. Qualifications listed for the position included an MBA.
The staff decided to fight back in court — and watched Topix guard its legal flank in April by dropping all their “volunteer” labor efforts overboard of the site with a new MuggleNet in everything but name: [Read more…]
Three quick notes about this news!
Let me know how you read these migraine inspired bon mots to her followers on Twixter!
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