The Irresistible Rise of Harry Potter: Kid-lit in a Globalised World

As the British state begins to unravel, and journalists compete to pronounce on the death of Britain, a schoolboy from suburban Surrey who lives for most of the year in a semi-parallel universe becomes the most popular figure in contemporary world literature.

Now read on ...everyone else does ...

Harry Potter is an orphan, oppressed and abused by the adults around him, who retreats into a fantasy world. But ironically, as Andrew Blake makes clear, J.K. Rowling rescues her character through the reinvention of that apex of class privilege, the English public school, a literary conceit that problematises Harry Potter's status as a role model and raises important social questions about the state of Blair's Britain.

Andrew Blake's examination of the Harry Potter phenomenon the literary equivalent of fast food also raises serious questions about the condition of the publishing industry, and filmmaking, and the ways in which the Potter consumer campaign has changed our ideas about literature and reading. Blake reflects on the ways in which these connections act as a template for Harry Potter's extraordinary international success.

Capitalism is, as the truism has it, global; certainly the much-translated Harry has repeated his Bloomsbury trick for child-consumer capitalism the world over. The Harry Potter industry provides the goods for all those generations brought together through the act of consumption. The books are packaged for both adults and kids, and they are supplemented by objects more squarely aimed at children.

Everything that could be taken from the books and films is available in Muggle-friendly form ...and there are plenty of websites and in-store promotional posters to tell you all about it, and encourage you to save, bully your parents or otherwise spend, spend, spend. Thus the new generation becomes the new consumer, and Harry Potter, having done his bit for the future of publishing, plays another significant part in the development of consumer capitalism. Magic. No wonder so many adults identify with him...