Quotations
Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!.
p. 91-92
It's lucky it's dark. I haven't blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.
p. 14, Spoken by Albus Dumbledore
Ah, yes, he said softly, Harry Potter. Our new - celebrity.
Snape's first words of the series, p. 101
Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
p. 216
Humans do have a knack for choosing precisely those things which are worst for them.
p. 215
I couldnt help overhearing what you and Malfoy were saying — Bet you could, Ron muttered.
p. 115
More Quotes >>
Encyclopedia
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first volume in a planned series of seven
books written by
British author
J. K. Rowling, and featuring
Harry Potter, a young wizard. The book was first published on 26 June 1997 by Bloomsbury in
London, and has also been made into a
film of the same name.
Both the book and the motion picture were released in the
United States with the title
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, citing the reason that most Americans in the target age group would not be as interested in something containing the word "philosopher" as they would "sorcerer", thus hurting sales. Scholastic, the book's US publisher, also "translated" the original book into American English. The spelling as well as many words and expressions were changed. This led to criticism by many readers. The New York Times ran an article titled "Harry Potter, Minus a Certain Flavour" on July 10, 2000, which heavily criticised Scholastic's decision to Americanise the US Harry Potter editions.
Whatever the reasons for or effects of the change, demand for the
Harry Potter books are an immensely popular series of fantasy novel [i]s by British [i]...
series grew very rapidly among young readers, who seemed to be undaunted by the increasing length and complexity of the volumes.
Translations
Plot overview
At the beginning of the story, on 1 November 1981, a wizard and a witch,
Albus Dumbledore and
Minerva McGonagall meet at number four, Privet Drive in
Little Whinging, a suburb of
Surrey, and discuss recent events in the
wizarding world.
Lord Voldemort, the most powerful and fearsome Dark wizard ever known, has finally been defeated. Unfortunately, he seems to have taken two last victims with him:
Lily and
James Potter. Their infant son,
Harry has somehow survived the encounter, with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead as the only apparent side-effect of Voldemort's attack. Harry will be a legend amongst the magical people, becoming known as "the Boy who Lived", and Dumbledore believes it best he is raised away from all the undesirable fame and attention his circumstances would bring.
Harry is brought to the two professors by
Rubeus Hagrid, gamekeeper of
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and close friend of Dumbledore. Harry is put in the reluctant care of his only living relatives, his mother's Muggle sister
Petunia Dursley, her husband
Vernon and their spoiled son
Dudley. The Dursleys intensely dislike magic and conceal from Harry any knowledge of his magical abilities and the wizarding world, telling him instead that his parents were killed in a car crash. The Dursleys neglect and mistreat Harry, whose bedroom is a cupboard under the stairs, filled with spiders.
A week before his eleventh birthday, Harry begins receiving letters delivered by
owls offering him a place at Hogwarts to learn magic. The Dursleys try to intercept the letters and take Harry away to a small island to escape them, but Hagrid tracks the family down. He tells Harry the truth about his parents and introduces him to the magical world. At
The Leaky Cauldron pub they meet a new Hogwarts professor and from there they enter
Diagon Alley, where Harry purchases the supplies he will need for school. Harry also learns of Lord Voldemort and his murder of Harry's parents, as well as Voldemort's lingering reputation despite being inactive . Another interesting connection between Harry and Voldemort is that their wands share the same core – a feather from the same phoenix's tail. Hagrid returns Harry to the Dursleys with a ticket for the school train to Hogwarts, from
Platform 9¾ at
King's Cross railway station,
London.
On the train to school, Harry becomes fast friends with
Ron Weasley, a poor boy from a large, loving family who is impressed by Harry's scar but not intimidated by his reputation, and meets
Hermione Granger, a bit of an annoying know-it-all. Upon arriving at Hogwarts, all new students are sorted into one of the four school
houses by trying on an ancient talking hat, The Sorting Hat, which was once the property of one of the school's founders, Godric Gryffindor. Each house has very specific characteristics:
Slytherin is filled with ambitious, cunning people who would use any means to get what they want;
Ravenclaw is home to those with sharp minds that value intelligence and wit;
Gryffindor houses those who are daring and brave at heart; and
Hufflepuff is characterised by fairness, honesty and hard work. When Harry is called up to be sorted, everyone whispers and is keen to see the outcome. The hat declares Harry to be difficult to sort. When Harry mentally declares his desire not to be sorted into Slytherin, about which he has heard unpleasant things, the hat mentions to Harry that he would do well in Slytherin. Since the hat finds Harry choosing against this, it sorts him into Gryffindor. Ron is also sorted into Gryffindor, as is Hermione. Harry's biggest rival is
Draco Malfoy, an arrogant and rude Slytherin student.
During the year, Harry learns more about the world of witches and wizards. After performing extraordinarily well during his first
broomstick flying lesson, Harry is drafted for his house's
Quidditch team, a sport unique to the wizarding world and internationally popular, and becomes the youngest Quidditch player in a hundred years. At Christmas, Harry is given the mysterious Christmas present of an Invisibility Cloak, which once belonged to his father, and which he uses to move unseen around the castle at night. He discovers the Mirror of Erised, which shows him surrounded by his parents and the rest of his family. He is advised by Dumbledore to stop seeking out the mirror, which will be moved, because of its addictive nature.
Harry and Ron initially dislike Hermione for her bossy and know-it-all demeanour. At one point, Ron teases her and she retreats to the girl's bathroom, crying, when a
troll is discovered in the castle. Harry and Ron go to find her and warn her but the troll is already in the bathroom. They fight it and Ron ends up knocking it out with its own club. When the professors come onto the scene, Hermione lies and says that it's her fault and after this, the three of them become good friends. They discover a three-headed dog, christened
Fluffy by Hagrid, guards a trapdoor in a forbidden corridor of Hogwarts. They speculate as to what it guards, deciding that Fluffy must be guarding the legendary Philosopher's Stone, which can produce an elixir of
eternal life. This stone was created and owned by
Nicolas Flamel. The three friends come to believe that
Severus Snape, the sinister Potions master and Head of Slytherin House, is trying to steal it in order to restore Lord Voldemort to power.
Believing the theft of the Stone to be imminent, Harry, Ron and Hermione go through the trapdoor to get to it first. They negotiate the security system set up by the school's staff and find that Professor Quirrell, a stuttering and seemingly meek person, not Snape, is trying to steal the Stone, and realise Snape was trying to protect Harry from harm all along. Harry confronts Quirrell and survives a second encounter with Lord Voldemort, who has been possessing Quirrell . Quirrell is fatally injured in the confrontation, his skin burned and blistered by Harry's touch, who finally faints. Voldemort's spirit then abandons its broken host, leaving Quirrell to die. During Harry's recovery after the encounter, Dumbledore reveals that Harry's mother died to protect Harry. This sacrifice of pure love gave Harry ancient magical protection from Voldemort's destructive spells. Dumbledore also reveals that, though Harry found the Stone, it will be destroyed to prevent future attempts by Voldemort to steal it. Dumbledore mentioned that Flamel had enough elixir to set his affairs in order, but noted that he would die.
Harry leaves Hogwarts having made close friends with Ron, Hermione and even Hagrid, as well as learning more about his own hidden talents and growing in self-esteem. He returns to the Dursleys with the knowledge that he does have people that love him.
Missing text
As with
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the American version of the book has retained text edited out of the British version. According to the author's website:
The missing text follows, highlighted in bold:
And now there were only three people left to be sorted. "Thomas, Dean," a black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table. "Turpin, Lisa," became a Ravenclaw and then it was Ron's turn.This edit also created a minor incongruency in the American edition. Since Dean Thomas's mention had been edited out of the British edition, it is mentioned that
"there were only three people left to be sorted". However, in the American edition,
Dean Thomas,
Lisa Turpin,
Ron Weasley and
Blaise Zabini were all sorted after this statement was made.
Editions
External links
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Harry Potter Series
