In a unique collaboration between Bloomsbury and the curators of the British Library, two new books will be published this autumn to accompany Harry Potter: A History of Magic: The Exhibition. The exhibition will run at the British Library from 20th October 2017 until 28th February 2018 as part of our 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone year long series of activities.
These beautiful books will be published on 20th October 2017 and will echo the contents of the exhibition, which takes visitors on a journey to where magic and myth began using an extraordinary range of wizarding books, manuscripts and objects, and combine fascinating treasures from the British Library’s collections with previously-unseen material from the Bloomsbury archive and J.K. Rowling. Both titles will be available for purchase from the British Library as well as general book retailers.
The first of the books is Harry Potter: A History of Magic – The Book of the Exhibition. It will be released as hardback and will contain “magical Jim Kay illustrations and unseen treasures from J.K. Rowling’s own archive”. The price will be £30.00. The second book is Harry Potter: A Journey Through A History of Magic and will be released in paperback for £12.99. Its description is similar to the previous one, promising “unseen sketches and manuscript pages from J.K. Rowling, magical illustrations from Jim Kay and weird, wonderful and inspiring artefacts that have been magically released from the archives at the British Library.” It is not clear the differences between both volumes yet.