Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling.
The first novel in the Harry Potter series and Rowling's debut novel, it follows Harry Potter, a young
wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday, when he receives a letter of
acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry makes close friends and a few
enemies during his first year at the school, and with the help of his friends, he faces an attempted
comeback by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents, but failed to kill Harry
when he was just 15 months old.

The book was first published in the United Kingdom on 26 June 1997 by Bloomsbury. It was
published in the United States the following year by Scholastic Corporation under the title Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It won most of the British book awards that were judged by children
and other awards in the US. The book reached the top of the New York Times list of best-selling
fiction in August 1999 and stayed near the top of that list for much of 1999 and 2000. It has been
translated into at least 73 other languages, and has been made into a feature-length film of the same
name, as have all six of its sequels. The novel has sold in excess of 120 million copies.[2][3]

Most reviews were very favourable, commenting on Rowling's imagination, humour, simple, direct
style and clever plot construction, although a few complained that the final chapters seemed rushed.
The writing has been compared to that of Jane Austen, one of Rowling's favourite authors; Roald
Dahl, whose works dominated children's stories before the appearance of Harry Potter; and the
Ancient Greek story-teller Homer. While some commentators thought the book looked backwards to
Victorian and Edwardian boarding school stories, others thought it placed the genre firmly in the
modern world by featuring contemporary ethical and social issues, as well as overcoming obstacles
like bullies.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, along with the rest of the Harry Potter series, has been
attacked by some religious groups and banned in some countries because of accusations that the
novels promote witchcraft under the guise of a heroic, moral story. Other religious commentators
have written that the book exemplifies important viewpoints, including the power of self-sacrifice
and the ways in which people's decisions shape their personalities. The series has been used as a
source of object lessons in educational techniques, sociological analysis and marketing.

Synopsis
Harry Potter has been treated abusively by his aunt and uncle, Vernon and Petunia Dursley and
bullied by their son Dudley since the death of his parents ten years prior. This changes on his
eleventh birthday, when a half-giant named Rubeus Hagrid delivers a letter of acceptance into
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, after Vernon and Petunia destroyed previous ones.
Harry learns his parents, James and Lily Potter, also wizards, were murdered by the most evil and
powerful dark wizard, Lord Voldemort, and so Harry was sent to live with the Dursleys as a baby.
Voldemort lost his powers after failing to kill Harry, forcing himself into exile and making Harry
famous among the hidden magical community.
 Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, a hidden London street, introducing him to the wizarding
world. Harry discovers his parents left him a fortune at Gringotts Wizarding Bank. He also receives a
pet owl, Hedwig, school supplies, and a wand. A month later, Harry catches the Hogwarts Express
from King's Cross railway station's secret platform, Platform 9+3⁄4. On the train, he befriends fellow
first-year Ronald Weasley, meets Hermione Granger, whose snobbishness the two boys dislike, and
makes an enemy of first-year Draco Malfoy, who mocks Ron's impoverished family. At Hogwarts, a
magical Sorting Hat assigns the first-years to four Houses - Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and
Ravenclaw - that best suit their personalities. Ron tells Harry about Slytherin's reputation of housing
dark witches and wizards. Harry rejects the Hat's offer of Slytherin, which Draco joins, and is instead
sorted into Gryffindor with Ron and Hermione. Harry discovers he has a talent for flying on
broomsticks and is recruited into his House's team for Quidditch as a Seeker. Harry dislikes the
school's Potions master, Severus Snape, who favours Slytherin while seeking to fail Harry and his
friends. Malfoy tricks Harry and Ron into risking expulsion by leaving their rooms at night, despite
Hermione's efforts to stop them, and tells Filch, the school's caretaker, where they will be. Hermione
joins them and, after realizing Malfoy's ruse, they run away. They discover a huge three-headed dog
standing guard over a trapdoor in a forbidden corridor. A troll interrupts the school's Halloween
celebrations. It enters the girls' bathroom, where Hermione is saved by Harry and Ron, and the three
become best friends. Coupled with Snape's recent leg injury and behaviour, the event prompts Harry,
Hermione, and Ron to suspect Snape of trying to enter the trapdoor. Fearing the boys' expulsion,
Hermione forbids them from investigating, directing Harry's attention to his first Quidditch game. His
broomstick attempts to throw him off while mid-air. Snape's strange behaviour during the match
leads Hermione to suspect that he had jinxed Harry's broom. Christmas arrives and Harry receives an
anonymous gift - his father's invisibility cloak. Using it to explore the school, he discovers the Mirror
of Erised, which shows the viewer's deepest desires come true.

The trio find a newspaper report about an attempted robbery of a Gringotts vault—one that
Hagrid and Harry had visited when getting Harry's school supplies. They work out that the object kept
under the trapdoor is a Philosopher's Stone, which grants its user immortality and the ability to turn
any metal into pure gold. Harry is also informed by a centaur named Firenze that Voldemort is
plotting to steal the Stone to restore himself and return to power. When the school's headmaster
Albus Dumbledore is lured from Hogwarts under false pretences, Harry, Hermione and Ron fear that
the theft is imminent and descend through the trapdoor.

They encounter a series of obstacles, each requiring unique skills possessed by one of the three.
Ron and Hermione have to stay behind while Harry goes ahead. Harry finds Quirinus Quirrell, the
Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, who reveals he had tried to kill Harry by jinxing his broom and
letting a troll into the school, while Snape had been trying to protect Harry. Voldemort, whose face
has sprouted on the back of Quirrell's head, is using Quirrell to attain the Philosopher's Stone. Harry
is forced to stand before the final obstacle, the Mirror of Erised, to get past it. It recognises Harry's
lack of greed for the Stone and deposits it into his pocket. Quirrell attempts to seize the stone and kill
Harry, but his flesh burns on contact with him. Harry's scar suddenly hurts and he passes out.

Days later, he awakens in the school's infirmary, where Dumbledore explains Harry's survival
against Voldemort is due to a protective charm on Harry left by his mother's sacrificing her life for
him. Quirrell's hatred and greed caused him to burn on contact with Harry, and he was abandoned to
die by Voldemort. Dumbledore reveals he sent Harry the invisibility cloak, while the Stone has been
destroyed. The school year ends with the final feast, during which Gryffindor wins the House Cup.
Harry returns to Privet Drive for the summer, anticipating the holidays after neglecting to tell the
Dursleys that the use of spells is forbidden by under-aged wizards.
Development
The book, which was Rowling's debut novel, was written between approximately June 1990 and
some time in 1995. In 1990, Jo Rowling, as she preferred to be known,[a] wanted to move with her
boyfriend to a flat in Manchester and in her words, "One weekend after flat hunting, I took the train
back to London on my own and the idea for Harry Potter fell into my head... A scrawny, little, black-
haired, bespectacled boy became more and more of a wizard to me... I began to write Philosopher's
Stone that very evening. Although, the first couple of pages look nothing like the finished
product."[10] Then, Rowling's mother died and, to cope with her pain, Rowling transferred her own
anguish to the orphan Harry.[10] Rowling spent six years working on Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone, and after it was accepted by Bloomsbury, she obtained a grant of £8,000 from
the Scottish Arts Council, which enabled her to plan the sequels.[16] She sent the book to an agent
and a publisher, and then the second agent she approached spent a year trying to sell the book to
publishers, most of whom thought it was too long at about 90,000 words. Barry Cunningham, who
was building a portfolio of distinctive fantasies by new authors for Bloomsbury Children's Books,
recommended accepting the book,[17] and the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chief
executive said it was "so much better than anything else".[18]