Rare edition of JK Rowling's Beedle the Bard sells for £368,750

Jewelled book was Harry Potter author’s thank you gift to publisher ‘who thought an overlong novel about a boy wizard in glasses might just sell’

Publisher Barry Cunningham’s copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard was created, handwritten and illustrated by JK Rowling.
Publisher Barry Cunningham’s copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard was created, handwritten and illustrated by JK Rowling. Photograph: Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images for Sotherby's

Rare edition of JK Rowling's Beedle the Bard sells for £368,750

Jewelled book was Harry Potter author’s thank you gift to publisher ‘who thought an overlong novel about a boy wizard in glasses might just sell’

A handwritten and jewelled edition of JK Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard gifted to her publisher has sold for £368,750 at auction.

Rowling handwrote seven copies of her collection of fairytales set in the Harry Potter universe and gave six as presents to “those most closely connected to the Harry Potter books”. The seventh copy, made by Rowling to raise money for her charity Lumos, was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in 2007 for £1.95m.

The copy sold by Sotheby’s in London on Tuesday was made for publisher Barry Cunningham, who was working at Bloomsbury when he decided to publish the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Rowling’s agent Christopher Little sent the manuscript to 12 publishers before Cunningham, who now runs children’s publisher Chicken House, read it. He later revealed he had warned Rowling that “she would never make any money from her book... not many children’s hardbacks sold in those days.”

One of only seven copies of a handwritten and illustrated book by British author J.K. Rowling titled The Tales of Beedle the Bard is on show at Sotheby’s auction house in London on December 9, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / Justin TALLISJUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images
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A glimpse inside Cunningham’s copy of the book. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Cunningham’s copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which had a guide price of £300,000-£500,000, is a cloth-wrapped, leather-bound manuscript covered in semi-precious stones and features a silver mounted skull. A note from Rowling in the front of the edition reads: “To Barry, the man who thought an overlong novel about a boy wizard in glasses might just sell … THANK YOU.”

The book was delivered to Cunningham in an envelope in 2007. Sotheby’s said that the stones on the manuscript’s cover are rhodochrosite, which Rowling notes at the end of the volume are “traditionally associated with love, balance and joy in daily life”.

The first page of the story, The Warlock’s Hairy Heart.
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The first page of the story The Warlock’s Hairy Heart, about a wizard who goes to great lengths to avoid falling in love. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

The Tales of Beedle the Bard play a crucial role in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final novel in Rowling’s fantasy series. A copy is left to Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore “in the hope that she will find it entertaining and instructive”, and contains clues used by the friends in their quest to destroy the evil wizard Voldemort.

A mass market edition of the book went on sale in 2008 and, at its peak, was selling two copies a second around the world.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/13/beedle-the-bard-jk-rowling-auction
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