Rowling Library Issue #93: Best Ever?

The Rowling Library’s September issue is now available and it has four articles that I found to be remarkable reading. I urge you to download and read it (or simply read it online) when you have a moment; it rewards all the time you may invest in it, believe me.

I wrote earlier this week about ‘Rowling’s Ten Most Important Interviews‘ and today, courtesy of TRL’s September issue, I was able to download a copy of an interview Rowling gave the Scottish Book Collector newsletter in 1998, parts of which were used for two articles by Jennie Renton in different venues years later. Was it one of the most important interviews in Rowling’s twenty-five plus years of talking to the media? I don’t think it cracks the Top Ten, but, as the TRL reporter notes, the earlier interviews in Rowling’s history are the more revealing and this talk is not an exception to that rule of thumb.

I look forward to writing a post here dedicated to what Rowling said to Renton about how she writes, what scene she loved in her favorite Chronicles of Narnia book, the importance to her of Olivander’s, her feelings of “terrific fear” “inadequacy” and “helplessness” as a child, her insistence on the one hand that she doesn’t “intend to make a point or teach a philosophy of life,” while, on the other, she allows that her books have a “moral… subtext” if not “moralistic.” Sean Harris, perhaps Rowling’s closest friend, gets a shout-out as well, perhaps his first appearance in interview canon.

This interview alone makes the September TRL issue worth a download. But there’s more.

A much less bally-hooed article in this month’s TRL offering is the follow-up by Ibid to his cover TRL article last month ‘What Will the Wizarding Archive Contain?‘ In it he shares how the actual ‘From the Wizarding Archive’ ebook and audiobook from PotterMore is organized, points out a few peculiarities in the editors’ choices, and then discusses both what was left out — partial and complete omissions — as well as the principal failing of the work. I won’t spoil that observation by ripping it out of context here, but it was a body-blow deftly delivered.

This piece could have been a simple scorecard of ‘hits and misses’ from his preview article last month but instead, in its conclusions made from a very careful study of the PotterMore material’s history and current published form, provides an invaluable insight for Potter Pundits globally about how much of Rowling’s ‘Scottish Book’ encyclopedia is missing from the current volume. As I wrote in my article about the new TRL anthology that Ibid edited, he is the go-to Subject Matter Expert on Rowling manuscript and publication history, a subject frankly I know next to nothing about because it doesn’t really interest me. I learned in this piece why it should interest me, namely, there is Rowling material that was published on PotterMore that is no longer available anywhere.

I confess to being reminded of how differently Ibid and I see the books when I read his disagreement with the editors for placing the Wand Lore chapters near the front of this collection (see that 1998 interview mentioned above and my discussion in How Harry Cast His Spell about those wand cores!), but those of us who struggle to keep up with the post Deathly Hallows writing by Rowling about Hogwarts can only feel gratitude for Ibid’s professional cataloging of its contents, dates, and current availability.

So that’s two great reads in this month’s TRL. The two remaining pieces were less noteworthy but challenging and informative in their own right.

Mike Rawson of Potter Rare Books’ description of perhaps the earliest autographed copy of Philosopher’s Stone with a brief history of that book’s publication taught me more than I want to admit; no, I was unaware that the first print run of the book had many more softcover than hardcover copies (etc!). Sylvia Lupen’s review of the ‘Back to Hogwarts 2024’ event in NYC included a survey of what is going on in Potter fandom and publishing that once more clued me in to how clueless I am about such matters.

Was this the best ever issue of The Rowling Library? I cannot remember a better one, but I think the reason I was so impressed by this month’s e-zine, beyond the usual top-flight writing, editing, and formatting, was realizing how valuable TRL has become to me. It’s writers do not as a rule share the “artistry and meaning” focus (obsession?) we have at HogwartsProfessor but what they provide is invaluable information and perspective that invariably throws light in my blind-spots.

So, my hat is doffed once again to Patricio Tarantino, Ibid, and the other stalwarts at The Rowling Library. Check out their latest work via download or the TRL website — and give some thought to subscribing in order to support their efforts!