It is early morning, just as in the story of the man who owns the Harry Potter prequel. This time it is Christmas Eve too, and Carly cannot sleep. There is an auction on eBay that caught her attention, and without knowing that she is going to find something unique, she clicked on the link.
A proof copy, also known as advance (review) copy, is a copy of a new book, made by the publishers, to be sent to booksellers, journalists and reviewers before the book is printed for distribution. The text of these copies may be different from the final version – it is often the same with the covers, artworks and dust jackets.
Only the first three Harry Potter books – The Philosopher’s Stone, The Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban – had their own proof copies.
In addition to being valuable, there is some mystery around them too. In the first place, there are two different proof copies of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: a green one and a purple one. Secondly, and even more hard to understand, is that the first two books (Stone and Chamber) had a trial dust jacket with some of the proof copies, while collectors from around the world never saw a trial dust jacket for Azkaban.
Bloomsbury produced the purple Azkaban proof first but at some point stopped its production most probably because the purple proof contains a series of strange typos toward the end of the book in the form of Xs in place of many words, making reading somewhat difficult.
The trial dust jacket mystery is important because Bloomsbury had issued approximately five to six of the Philosopher’s Stone proofs and Chamber of Secrets proofs with test dust jackets – which means there are less than ten of them around the world (Peter Kenneth owns of the Chamber of Secrets). But we never saw any of Prisoner of Azkaban. Until Christmas Eve.
It is five in the morning and Carly, who has been a serious collector of rare Potter books and proofs since 2009, is reading the auction of a purple Prisoner of Azkaban proof copy that includes a promotional flyer for a book from Australia, but also includes a never seen before trial dust jacket – that many of us believed to be non existent. Luckily for Carly, she made an offer below the price asked for the seller, and two hours later, the book was hers. In the first days of the year, Carly received the proof copy with the trial dust jacket. The book (and its coveted dust jacket) is inside of a fireproof / waterproof box – which makes sense given this is possible the last and unique trial dust jacket that has survived.
Carly has been generous enough to talk to us about her experience and her knowledge about the proof copies of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Bloomsbury produced the purple Azkaban proof first but at some point stopped its production most probably because the purple proof contains a series of strange typos toward the end of the book in the form of Xs in place of many words, making reading somewhat difficult. At some point, probably quickly after stopping production of the purple proof, Bloomsbury issued a green wrapped proof with a corrected text block. Up until a few years ago, many Potter book collectors and dealers alike were saying there were only 50 of the purple proofs and 250 of the green. Currently, the more favored opinion is 150 of each. Really though, no one knows.
From studying the first two proofs and their test jackets, Bloomsbury appeared to have liked to match the cover of the proof with the test jacket. The Philosopher’s Stone test jacket and proof bear similar colors as do those of the Chamber of Secrets test jacket and proof. I can also now say the same is true for the purple proof and the test jacket. Perhaps the reason that the Azkaban test jacket appears to be quite rare is that not all were distributed. After all, while the Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets test jackets are quite rare, they still show up. If the Azkaban test jacket entered the publication process close to the time when Bloomsbury stopped production of the purple proof, Bloomsbury may not have distributed the full amount of test jackets created with the green proofs simply due to the strange color pairings between the green proof and the test jacket. Or perhaps Bloomsbury distributed their usual number of five to six test jackets and the remaining Azkaban test jackets have just been tucked away in private collections, keeping the Potter collecting world in the dark to their existence.
While we may never know when in the publication process the purple proof production was stopped or how many Azkaban test jackets were created or when these jackets entered into this same timeline, we do know this test jacket’s color scheme was used in early promotional flyers. These flyers seem to be quite rare as well, but they do mirror the layout and color scheme to that of the test jacket.
The mystery surrounding the number of purple and green proofs produced remains, but we know there was at least one Azkaban purple proof distributed with a test jacket, which leads me to think that there are more Azkaban test jacket/proof sets in existence. What will be interesting is if a test jacket is found with a green proof; if so, we may have a slightly better idea of the Azkaban publishing timeline.
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