A new biography of J. K. Rowling is badly needed. J.K. Rowling: A Biography by Sean Smith provides an accessible, heavily detailed, but structurally simplistic look at the author’s meteorological rise. First published in 2001, Sean Smith’s unauthorized account focuses deeply on the trials and tribulations Rowling faced before finding global success with Harry Potter. Because his work functions as a time capsule from the very beginning of her career, it misses more than two decades of monumental shifts in her professional and personal life.

My copy of Smith’s book bears the dents and battle scars of being hurled across the room when the reference I’m looking for proves to be missing or inaccurate. There are some howlers such as the lower second class honours that Rowling gained at Exeter are translated into an incomprehensible (for British readers) 2.2 Grade Point Average, and Rowling’s parents being posted to a Commando base at Arbroath (as it is now), not the Royal Naval Air Station technical training base (as it was then).

As John Granger pointed out when the new biography by Solomon Schmidt was announced, he is very young, and his publisher seems to specialise in controversial books by, among others, Woody Allen, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. This lefty socialist was not filled with confidence. Although Mr Scmidt sent me a very polite mail, I didn’t engage with him.

My reticence seemed to be confirmed when stories were placed in the gutter press to drum up publicity for the new book:

National Enquirer: J. K. Rowling’s Dad Sold Signed ‘Harry Potter’ Copy After She ‘Told Him to Go Pound Sand’

New York Post: JK Rowling’s father ‘ran illegal cannabis operation’ from secret cellar in house

In the later article Rowling’s cousin Ben is quoted as saying “When Pete was visiting me at one point in 1997, he told me that over the previous few years, he had been one of the largest growers of marijuana in South West England and Wales”. As someone who was a young man in Wales in 1997, I can confirm you would need a fair size farm to be one of the largest growers in the South West, not a few square feet of cold store designed to keep milk cool, when Church Cottage was a schoolhouse.

My worst fears seemingly confirmed, I was surprised when Solomon offered me a copy to review ahead of the publication at the end of June. The copy was electronic so I couldn’t even have the satisfaction of hurling it across the room…

In order to give A Pen to Change the World a fair review, I gave myself the following criteria, any one of which would be a valuable addition to the Rowling literature. If it fails all three tests, then save your money:

1. A synthesis of all the available information we have about Rowling’s life brought up to the present date. This needs to be impartial, its okay to be sceptical and even critical, as long as the sources are presented fairly. This doesn’t need to be absolutely complete (impossible in a single volume), but should at least give a fair representation of what we know.
2. Present new information, impeccable sourced, to known (not anonymous) people who’s lives have intersected with J.K. Rowling.
3. Work as a piece of literature. The life of J. K. Rowling is extraordinary. If that life can be presented in an engaging way, and be a joy to read, without ‘fictionalising’ her life, this would still be a valuable book even if the above goals can’t be met.

A Synthesis of all the Available Information

A Pen to Change the World is wonderfully comprehensive, with material that has been made available after the Smith biography, woven cleverly into the narrative both pre and post Potter. All of the sources are included in an appendix of some 91 pages and referenced to each line and page of the biography. Solomon did not need to do this; most writers would have been happy with the five-page bibliography and links to extensive article and AV citations. What this does provide is an invaluable tool for researchers. A source list presented in a chronology of J. K. Rowling’s life, that will save very much time for anyone interested in looking for biographical reflections in Rowling’s works.

There are some surprising omissions. The astrological duo Starsky and Cox, that J. K. met and befriended during her year in Paris do not get a mention. But these are very few and far between, and I do bear in mind that the Hogwarts Professor interest in Rowling’s astrology might be somewhat niche.

It is Solomon’s credit that I could tell from the text what his politics biases might be. As a social minded liberal, what in the UK is called a centrist, in the later chapters there are parts of the biography I found troubling. I feel confident that would be true for everyone, no matter their political persuasion, because wherever a conflict is discussed, the author has presented both sides neutrally, and in the protagonist’s own voice.

***** Neutral, comprehensive and excellently sourced.

Present New Information

Although the biography is unauthorised by J. K. Rowling herself, Solomon Schmidt has gained access to some well-known names in Rowling’s life: Jorge Arantes, Barry Cunningham (the publisher who signed J. K. Rowling to Bloomsbury), Steve Eddy (Rowling’s English teacher), Ben Rowling and Bryony Rowling.

The revelations published in the press, at the time of writing, have come from the last two. Ben and Bryony are her American cousins, and their stories seem to be presented honestly. Where there are discrepancies with the possible (I’m wording this delicately) this could be due to the fanciful reminiscences of childhood or the hyperbole of Peter over a few drinks. I find it likely that Peter did grow marijuana, but it would only be enough for home consumption (perhaps initially to alleviate Anne’s symptoms of MS) and perhaps for a few friends in the Pub.

For students of J. K. Rowling’s lake there are a few more revelations that I have agreed not to mention prior to publication, but I eagerly look forward to discussing after that time.

**** New information has been published, and while I don’t think there is anything there to set the world on fire, Solomon is to be congratulated for finding what he has.

Work as a piece of literature.

This book is beautifully written. For the first few chapters I tried to keep track of the source material by keeping the book open to the appendix on one table while reading the text with another but abandoned this to concentrate on the story. The prose complements the shades of light and dark without being overly intrusive. A few times Solomon inserts some sentences to evoke the time and place without it appearing padded. In fact, the straightforward style can appear sparse at times but helps what is a very complex life clip along at pace. Uniquely, this biography has made it to my to-be-re-read list and not just as a reference volume.

***** A wonderfully written story, that works as a very immersive read.

Conclusion *****

I have no hesitation in recommending this book to any Rowling fans and scholars. In fact, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good story well told. The importance of A Pen to Change the World to future scholars is thanks to its voluminous citations, new references to never before documented interviews and scrupulous impartiality. The reason for it to likely enjoy widespread popularity will be down to J. K. Rowling being one of the centuries great lives. It is a life that deserves a biography of the standard of Solomon Schmidt. 5/5 Stars

In July 2020 with the advent of the Trans Wars, however, MuggleNet broke with Rowling, Inc., with which entity they had previously served as an unpaid marketing extension, in fidelity to their beliefs that human beings can become the other sex by believing they are. MuggleNet made this move, all but declaring the author of the Harry Potter series ‘She Who Must Not Be Named’ on their site’s posts and podcasts, by linking arms in a brotherly boycott with every other fandom site (except this one and The Rowling Library).

The difference in those closed ranks, though, was that the founder of MuggleNet, Emerson Spartz, had sold his website in 2020 to Topix Media Lab, a magazine and paperback book publisher that had already been printing Potter titles with MNet cooperation for years. The new owners oversaw a reformatting of the site and published a wave of new book titles but for the most part retained its staff of many years, most of which were technically volunteers, and its large archive of posts and podcasts.

In September 2025, though, Topix decided to clean house and start over. They fired everybody and in April 2026 wiped the site clean of its past. As The Leaky Cauldron’s ‘Amanda Kirk’ wrote last week in a piece titled ‘MuggleNet Has Become a Horcrux:’

In 2020, the site changed ownership to a company, Topix Media Lab, that had been in partnership with MN for its print publications. For some years after the sale, operations at the site appeared similar from the outside, albeit with a seemingly bigger push for ad revenue by Topix. In September 2025, Topix emailed MN staff to inform them that their services were no longer required. Staff numbers had fluctuated but some had remained dedicated to MN for nearly 20 years. Unless the owners planned to shut down MN, why abruptly dismiss all that institutional knowledge and devotion? The mystery deepened when Topix posted an ad on LinkedIn looking for a single full-time paid staff member to run the site. Qualifications listed for the position included an MBA.

The staff decided to fight back in court — and watched Topix guard its legal flank in April by dropping all their “volunteer” labor efforts overboard of the site with a new MuggleNet in everything but name:

As reported in La Gazette du Sorcier, in February 2026, some former staff members filed a class action suit against Topix in New Jersey District Court alleging that it had violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by not paying them for their work on the site. The complaint is publicly available and alleges that Topix improperly classified the MN staff as “volunteers” whilst obtaining economic benefit from their labour. As that suit wends its way through the legal system, posts have appeared on MN social channels hinting at change for the site and, on April 23, a rebranded site appeared, with no advertisements and with most of the historic content gone. (This sudden change has been dissected on the Harry Potter subreddit under the title “RIP MuggleNet”.) You can follow the progress of the case here.

‘Amanda Kirk’ thinks the Topix Media Lab is doing what its doing to position itself for a Big Juicy Deal with Rowling, Inc., in conjunction with the teevee adaptation of the Hogwarts Saga coming to your living room this Christmas:

Why remove all content, decades worth of fan contributions, and start over with a clean slate? Why dismiss all staff and hire an MBA? What is the goal, the benefit of this new approach for Topix, the site’s current owner?

It might have something to do with the upcoming HBO Harry Potter series. By renovating the site and clearing out all the old content and people associated with it, they can approach Warner Bros./HBO about securing an exclusive sponsorship deal to promote the new series. Unlike a brand new fan site, this relaunch brings with it the reputation and following of MuggleNet, but it no longer has any content about the movies or critical references to the author, just a blank canvas for promotion of the new series. The appeal to Topix is obvious: A lucrative contract as an official outlet for a series expected to run for nearly a decade.

That makes sense, of course. Topix Media Lab bought MuggleNet to make money and the new Harry Potter programming on the horizon promises to  bolster the website’s value significantly, maybe even bring it back to its glory days pre-2020. Which glory days included a hand-in-glove all-but-partnership with Rowling, Inc.

I think what The Leaky Cauldron is missing, though, is that, by suing Topix Media Lab in February for benefitting from their labor without compensation, the legacy MuggleNet staff pushed the site’s ownership to dump all that content in April so that it could argue in court that said content was both worthless and no longer benefitting the owners, if it ever had.

That decision to Clean House enabled Topix to re-position itself with respect to Rowling, Inc.. Not to mention welcoming the greater part of international Harry Potter fandom that either never cared about making their love of the books all about celebrating those afflicted with gender dysphoria and attendant mental illnesses or is tired of the Trans Wars. By dumping all their pre April 2026 content, the new MuggleNet has erased the former staff’s hysteric Rowling calumny and omnipresent transgender fixation. That guards their legal flanks and opens the doors to a restored relationship with Team Rowling, HBO+, Warner Brothers, as well as that infinitely greater part of Rowling’s audience that has never gone to a fandom conference.

There was some great work in what MuggleNet just erased from its site. Beatrice Groves’ ‘Bathilda’s Notebooks’ entries? They’re all gone. (We’re changing the links at our Beatrice Groves Pillar Post here so that all her MuggleNet work will have Wayback Machine urls for easy access.) My podcasts at MuggleNet? They’d long ago taken down the work I did with Keith Hawk on MuggleNet Academia — which Keith reposted at that link — but the 44 shows I did with Katherine McDaniel as ‘Reading, Writing, Rowling’ before I jumped HMS Caitlyn Jenner can only be found via the Web Archives.

But with the few jewels that were tossed, the new MuggleNet has also taken down their July 2020 post that spelled out its resistance campaign to Rowling the Transphobe (it, too, can be read on the Wayback Machine: ‘Our Commitment’). It can still be found at The Leaky Cauldron and The Harry Potter Lexicon where apparently it remains their active policy.

I’m delighted that MuggleNet has reinvented itself and done its best to erase all memory of its positions during the madness of the Trans Wars. An apology to Rowling and the sane part of fandom and Potter punditry they called bootlickers (and black-balled from their conferences) would be better but tossing everything in the Memory Hole is a great beginning. Here’s hoping that Leaky and the Lexicon will re-invent themselves, too, without needing to drop their staffs and erase their archives. Every Confundus Charm has its expiration date, after all.

Post post: From my July 2020 post about my last MNet appearance:

I am leaving and will not be working with the “#1 Wizarding World Resource” until they retract both their in-house and public assertion that J. K. Rowling is a transphobe (and that as such The Presence represents a danger or is “committing harm” to fandom members) and their attempts to ‘cancel’ her. I left on good terms both with Professor McDaniel and Kat Miller, the MNet Creative and Marketing Director, no bridges burned, but it was time for us to acknowledge we disagree on essential matters and our relationship needed to change to reflect that disagreement.

Post post post: ‘MuggleCast: The Harry Potter Re-Read Podcast’ checks in on the new MuggleNet — ‘MuggleNet is Dead!’

Url to Thread

Three quick notes about this news!

1. If 72 chapters is approximately 60% of Sleep Tight, Evangeline, then we’re looking at another 120 chapter book. At best, those migraines not reflecting a brain tumor or even a chronic condition, Strike 9 won’t be with us until late in 2027. That she is writing and enjoying the process, however, means the intense planning of this entry in a series of intricately structured novels is over and she is in the hard-slog of writing business. Fair winds, etc.
2. Check out the Rowling tweet on the thread of which the Serious Striker thought it appropriate (and apparently Rowling agreed!) to ask about the fictional work in progress. Maybe her posts about government ineptitude and party politics are the secret passage to ask The Presence questions about her work? Those of you who enjoy life on social media, please ask her about the ten book series structure, the alchemical sequence, or whether the allegory of Cormoran and Robin is Cupid-Psyche mythic template, Jungian archetypal psychology, or Shakespearean romance.
3. “After a mere seven years, Strike is finally in open pursuit.” One of the speculative ideas about Evangeline has been that Robin will be disappearing from Strike’s life for much of the novel via a kidnapping or a retreat to work with the Cursing Crone Psychologist (a la Psyche’s trip to see Persephone at Venus’ bidding). If Strike is at last “in open pursuit” of winning Robin’s hand in marriage, that suggests that, no, Robin will be center stage in Strike 9. Doesn’t it?

Let me know how you read these migraine inspired bon mots to her followers on Twixter!

Warren Farha died last night. If you’ve heard of Warren or had the pleasure to meet him, if you don’t live in Wichita, Kansas, odds are it is because of Eighth Day Books, an independently owned bookstore in a quirky private residence whose every shelf contains at least a month’s worth of challenging reading, fiction and non-fiction, that will provoke and raise up your thinking about what it means to be human.

Read the wikipedia page about Eighth Day Books or the New York Times 2015 profile (unlocked by Rod Dreher) after taking the Sorina Higgins quick guided tour of the store above. Hogwarts Professor is a weblog for Serious Readers; Eighth Day Books is a pilgrimage site for such people. Like few other places I have been and even fewer business establishments, Eighth Day Books reflects a single person with a vision of a possibility that no one else saw and which grew to include an international and local community of other faithful, intelligent people whose lives were changed by it.

I was invited by Eighth Day Books to be the featured speaker at the first Eighth Day Institute symposium sixteen years ago. I met Warren then, met him again when I spoke a few years later at the Orthodox cathedral in Wichita, and once more most recently at a St John’s College graduation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Each time I was impressed by his quiet solidity and sobriety, a perceptible depth of character beneath kindness and a sense of humor that was much more about thoughtful smiles and the connection of eye contact than guffahs.

The topos of grief is to say, ‘The world is a better place because of Warren Farha; the world will be less a place of joy and fraternal love in his absence.’ This is true, of course, and profoundly so however cliched the sentiment may seem especially to those of us who were blessed to meet him, even incidentally as my meetings were. I trust that the thoughtful people at Eighth Day Books will continue to run the business as Warren did and that readers here, if they have not been there already, will visit the store in person or via its website.

My take-away from Warren’s life and Eighth Day Books, though,  is from the sui generis genesis point of the operation. As he explained it years ago in a talk he gave about vocation:

On May 17, 1987, my wife Barbara was in an automobile accident, injuries from which took her life and the life of our unborn third child some two months later.

At this particular point, I felt that my life had ended in certain deep ways, and that I had to start over. What to do? For a number of months, I had no idea. When I began to recover from the numbness that goes with grief, I began to ask myself fairly obvious questions, including one that was preeminent: what kind of job could I look forward to going to every day?

Well, answering that sort of question involves the tendencies, loves, talents, and gifts that were part of my particular makeup. That thing that I could look forward to — with only a B.A. in Religion and Classical Studies and not much desire to teach — that is, to get up in front of people all day every day — with a family and a firm and wholesome attachment to a home and a thriving Orthodox community in Wichita — was to open a bookstore.

The circle of friends and the tossing around of ideas about what that bookstore would contain came into play. I drew on those discussions, the advice of my friends both past and present, my experience in the evangelical world, by studies in college in the humanities and in literature, my exposure to church history and the Fathers, my deepening convictions about the fullness of the Orthodox faith, my growing sense that all things good and true and excellent and beautiful belonged together — and the essential elements of Eighth Day Books converged.

And my experience in the world of retail sales and all the grunt-work that went with it — these became the wheels for carrying this vision forward. The two discrete halves of my life seemed to coalesce with one another. Life began to make some sort of sense, on the most personal of levels. All the seemingly separate and distinct strands of my life were tied together. A lot of this I can only see in retrospect.

Of course, this is only my contribution to the story. I can’t begin to explain the essential part played by the support my present wife Chris, my extended family, my priest and now bishop Basil, the community of St George, and the wider Christian community of Wichita played in the formation and continued survival of this perhaps eccentric experiment of a bookstore.

There was a time when I knew that I could not not do this thing. Whether or not I sold a single book, I knew that this was the thing that I had to do. I hope and work every day that I might continue to have the honor of doing it.

“This perhaps eccentric experiment of a bookstore” — ‘eccentric’ only in being in large part ‘Christocentric’ — was born, then, in the crucible of grief, a grounded faith, humility, a love of reading, essential retail skills, and the fellowship of like-minded friends. If you read Warren’s talk about vocation (and do read the whole thing), you’ll note that he does not say, “Here is how I followed my vocation; you can do this, too, by doing what I did — just walk on these helpful yellow footprints!”

He acknowledges instead not only all the people who helped him in realizing his vocation and that is was a “coalescence” of the separate “halves” of his life, but also that it was not deliberate or understood by him at the beginning: “A lot of this I can see only in retrospect.” Implicit but not explicit to his essay on vocation is the secret sauce of courage and of fidelity to what he loved (reading!). what he believed (Orthodox faith in Christ), and what he knew how to do (he grew up in a family retail business).

I found Warren’s example challenging the several times our paths crossed; our temperaments define the spectrum end points of personality.

I thought and still find his accomplishment in inventing and sustaining an independent bookstore with only really good books for sale in it during the End Times of Bricks and Mortar Bookstores a marvel.

I think his legacy, most obviously the lives he has changed for the better by living within his vocation without histrionics, self-celebration, or complaint, inspiring.

Much will be made and with good reason about Warren’s death coming as it did on the Feast of the Ascension, perhaps the most neglected and easily overlooked feast in the Church liturgical calendar. Pressed between Pascha and Pentecost, always falling on a Thursday, Christ’s Ascension is forgotten by many, essential though the event was and remains for our hope for communion with God in Christ. I will risk saying the obvious in noting the synchronicity of this man’s death and this particular Feast of the Lord.

Memory Eternal!

Unlike Elizabeth’s other brilliant work at Hogwarts Professor, say, on the Faerie Queene epigraphs in Troubled Blood or about C. S. Lewis (e.g., here and here) when she writes about the Hunger Games she is drawing on more than her years of close reading and skills as a published scholar. District 12 is where she lives.

And she’s written a book about it that you can pre-order today and read next month: Appalachia in the Hunger Games: The Real Life Roots of District 12.

In it, Elizabeth brings together her roles as a literary maven and as a champion of Appalachian heritage. The descendant of some of the earliest settlers in Appalachia, she is a storyteller, historic interpreter, and teacher who has shared her passion for and knowledge of Appalachia and its people for over 30 years. As a writer, she has explored the literary treasures in texts ranging from the Chronicles of Narnia to Harry Potter and has been Deputy Head Mistress here at Hogwarts Professor for over fifteen years. She relies on both those roles to delve deeply into the Hunger Games books and to reveal how these fictional stories feature much that is true.

In 2011, when there were only two Hunger Games books and no films, Elizabeth started teaching the first book in her freshman composition classes in the western mountains of North Carolina. Her students responded so positively that she kept using the book for years. One reason the book worked so well was that her mountain college students understood the culture of District 12 because it was familiar. Suzanne Collins has created a world woven with elements of Appalachian culture and characters whose decisions and voices are often distinctly Appalachian.

This volume has been over a decade in the making. Elizabeth contributed a chapter on Appalachian Culture in the Hunger Games to the 2016 Critical Insights: The Hunger Games Trilogy. She quickly realized that there was enough material for an entire book. Although events like COVID and personal challenges presented obstacles along the way, those delays allowed her to draw upon the two prequels. Sunrise on the Reaping, in particular, has a wealth of connections to Appalachian culture and history. Thanks to an understanding publisher, this book will now be arriving just before the film of Sunrise on the Reaping.

Twelve chapters look at various aspects of Appalachia that directly connect to the novels: Geography and geology; Plant Life; Birds and Animals; Foodways; Stereotyping and Perception by the Larger Culture; Violence and Alcoholism: Self-Sufficiency, Isolation, and Xenophobia; Family and Independence; Faith and Fatalism; Humor and Storytelling; Music; Time: Circles and Cycles. Each chapter draws together Suzanne Collins’s fiction and the actual Appalachia and its people, history and culture. Readers who are unfamiliar with the real Appalachia are sure to learn more about the place they have visited in print, and even those who know Appalachia well will discover more about both the real mountains and the literary ones of District 12.

The book is currently available for pre-order on Amazon and from McFarland.  More information on Elizabeth, her work, and opportunities to hear her speak can be found at AppalachianInkling.com.

I confess that I assumed the word for barely magical witches and wizards born into magical families in J. K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, the folk she calls ‘Squibs,’ were given that name because of its onomatopoeic source in fireworks; per the Harry Potter Lexicon invaluable online resource, a squib is English idiom for “a dud firework that will not ignite properly.” It sounds like its meaning (as does “dud”) and a reader can feel in it the disappointment of magical parents when their child turns out not to have the gift that will make them full members of their community.

I learned this morning, however, that a squib is not a dud firework, or wasn’t originally though it may have that meaning today, and that it is mentioned more than once in one of Rowling’s known literary influences.

I subscribe to Dimitra Fimi’s ‘A Kind of Elvish Craft’ Substack site because I am a big fan of her work. She is a first tier scholar, as in ‘Professor of Fantasy and Children’s Literature at the University of Glasgow,’ generous to a fault in answering questions from all quarters, and she is blessed with a delightful sense of humor. Professor Fimi is best known as a leading figure in Tolkien Studies and all things fantasy and mythology but she is also a Serious Striker and Rowling fan. Check out Reading Rowling as Myth Maker and Myth Re-Writer: A Conversation with Dr Dimitra Fimi and ‘Sleep Tight, Evangeline,’ Miniature Psalters, and the Head of Persephone: A Conversation with Dimitra Fimi to discover what a treasure-chest she is for all who want to understand Rowling’s artistry and meaning better.

She has recently embarked on a series of posts about The Lord of the Rings that she calls ‘The Slow LotR Re-Read.’ As she explained in the first post of the series on ‘Tolkien Reading Day:’

This year, I am engaged in a slow (really slow!) re-read of The Lord of the Rings, taking copious notes and ruminating on tiny details. I have, naturally, read The Lord of the Rings numerous times (I used to keep a tally, but I’ve now lost count!). First, for pleasure, then as part of my PhD research, later for teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and to suppport supervision of PhD projects, and again and again as I have worked on various publications (from writing my first Tolkien book, to composing numerous articles and essays over the years, and to offering comments/suggestions to strengthen other scholars’ work during various editorial projects).

So, what makes this read different? Two things. First, it is regular, almost daily. But, secondly, and most importantly, it is very slow. I am reading no more than a page each time, sometimes lingering on one or two paragraphs only. This is, of course, both a luxury and a challenge. The natural instinct of most readers is to read on, to find out what will happen next, to follow the adventures of the protagonist(s) as they unfold over many pages and chapters. Slowing down is difficult. Taking the time to savour every word, sentence, and paragraph, before even getting to the level of pages or chapters, is counter-intuitive. We do it naturally as readers, of course, when we hit a particularly striking sentence, or a memorable turn of phrase, or a “quotable” couple of lines. Then we stop and ponder.

What I am trying to experiment with, though, is doing this stopping and thinking for every word, sentence, and paragraph in The Lord of the Rings. Each time I am pondering Tolkien’s choice of lexis, diction and syntax. I am also ruminating on his craft: his use of dialogue vs. narration, his construction of the narrator’s voice, his gradual fashioning of setting, his deliberate choice of imagery, his devising of characterization, his handling of story vs. plot. And, at the same time, I am stopping to consider details that I have missed before. I am still discovering new things in a text I’ve read so many times, by paying attention to elements of description, or spoken utterances, or tone of voice.

As I begin my slow-re-read of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for a book whose chapters will be posted at the Hogwarts Professor Substack page, I confess to being simultaneously excited and intimidated by Professor Fimi’s project. But I’m reading every entry in this series closely, though only a Tolkien casual reader and admirer, because there is gold in each slow-reading she does. And the occasional delightful find for a Rowling Re-Reader!

This morning it was in Dr Fimi’s reflections on The Fireworks of Gandalf. It turns out that a ‘Squib’ is not a dud firework or wasn’t originally:

The first firework terms we get in the text appear as soon as Gandalf has arrived at Bag End, frustrating the expectations of the hobbit-children who follow him:

When the old man, helped by Bilbo and some dwarves, had finished unloading, Bilbo gave a few pennies away; but not a single squib or cracker was forthcoming, to the disappointment of the onlookers.

These two terms, “squib” and “cracker”, are pretty old ones, and are both included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED):

• squib: “A common species of firework, in which the burning of the composition is usually terminated by a slight explosion”.
• cracker: “Any of various types of fireworks or other small explosives, esp. one which makes a loud, sharp sound, or a series of loud, sharp sounds, when it explodes”.

According to the OED, the earliest occurrence in the English language of each of these two firework terms is in the Elizabethan play The History of Orlando Furioso (c. 1591), Robert Greene’s loose adaptation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1532). Interestingly, they appear together as a sort of standard phrase. In the play, Orlando is trying to find out whether the figure in front of him is his beloved, Angelica, enquiring whether the sun shines upon the light in her eyes. The response comes from Tom, who is dressed as Angelica, so it is supposed to be rather comic: “Yes, yes, with squibs and crackers brauely [i.e. bravely].”

“Squibs and crackers” seems to have become a collective term for various kinds of fireworks or flashing lights, or a metaphor for mirth, humour, or satire. The two terms appear together again in one of Jonathan Swift’s poems satirising an English ironmaster:

Then furious he begins his march,
Drives rattling o’er a brazen arch:
With squibs and crackers arm’d, to throw
Among the trembling crowd below.

Similarly, the “squibs and crackers” phrase appears in the titles of two 19th-century collections of satirical/humorous poems:

• Squibs and crackers, serious, comical and tender (1812), by Jasper Smallshot (pen name of Major Ware)
• Squibs and Crackers: In Verse Or Worse (partly in the Lancashire Dialect) (1895), by T. S. Fairclough

“Squibs and crackers” also appears as a nonsensical term for trousers (or breeches) in the humorous folktale “Master of Masters”, collected and published in English Fairy tales, by Joseph Jacobs in 1895 (see Figure 3 below). Tolkien may well have known this fairy-tale collection and/or this particular story, but it seems to me that the “stock” phrase “squibs and crackers” was well-established anyway, and Tolkien may have picked it up from anywhere (including common usage).

There’s much, much more in the post about Tolkien’s (and Gandalf’s) fireworks which I urge you to read in full (and to subscribe to ‘A Kind of Elvish Craft‘ to catch up and receive every entry in this series). But what does this history of the word Squib tell Rowling Readers?

For one thing, there is no mention on the Harry Potter Lexicon ‘Squib’ entry of the word’s appearance and meaning in The Lord of the Rings, an important text by a known influence on Rowling’s Wizarding World, or of Orlando Furioso, a work crowded with hippogriffs. It seems the word Squib is still in usage, perhaps as ‘dud,’ an onomatopoeic source for the name of the Dursley’s first born and decidedly non-magical boy. The linkage of ‘squib’ and ‘dud’ in that sense may be another layer of playful jibe at the heroically-Muggle Dursleys who think their Dudders anything but a disappointment.

But Squib apparently used to mean, rather than a failed firework, a kind that “terminated by a slight explosion” rather than no explosion at all. This fits precisely with the magic of the Squib who, in Rowling’s work, again per the Lexicon, has some magical powers:

A Squib is not a Muggle. Born to a wizarding family, a Squib has such a low level of magical power that he or she is essentially unable to do any magic at all. However, while a Squib cannot cast spells, he or she can apparently see magical beings such as poltergeists, though not dementors.

That’s a nuanced distinction, sure, between next-to-none and none.  I think, though, that it captures the disappointment a magical family might have in producing a non-magical child. They expect and want roman candles, barkers, and thunderclaps (all in Gandalf’s inventory) and they get instead the least of fire-crackers with its “slight explosion.” A dud, in contrast, is a non-explosion, which, if Squib means dud and was used for these children, has a much darker coloration.

Which is the kind of nuance and care in word-choice I think is a quality found in Rowling’s work.

Thank you to Dr Fimi for this illuminating explosion of my misconception and for all the food-for-thought this morning I’ve been enjoying over my second breakfast!

Url to Tweet Above

A casual reading of Rowling’s tweet this morning about the “legalisation of assisted suicide” suggests that she is in favor of making into law the suspension of the Hippocratic Oath‘s prohibition of a doctor’s killing a patient intentionally:

I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.

This is sadly a credible reading because Rowling has expressed several times her support for laws allowing pre-natal infanticide, a murder of the innocent expressly forbidden in the Oath. Regardless of its credibility, the great majority of Rowling’s 13.8 million twixter followers who responded were appalled by her seeming support of said “legalisation” (see here, here, here, and here) and more than one celebrated it (see here and here).

Both reactions misread her tweet. It is a sarcastic response to the assertion that killing someone is a “choice” equivalent to “gay marriage” rather than an irreversible ending of human life, one that is much too often the result of coercion and manipulation rather than free and rational choice.

How do we know this for sure? First, because Rowling has tweeted previously her position against “assisted dying.”

Second, we know that she isn’t pro “assisted dying” because Rowling finally felt obliged to spell it out:

Nick Jeffery and I discussed the tweets and the several others Rowling posted in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. You can find that conversation about perhaps the most meaningful and personal tweets Rowling has made about her beliefs over at the Hogwarts Professor Substack site: Hallmarked Man and Rowling’s Tweets after the Shooting of Charlie Kirk: The Four Definitions, the Fixed Beliefs She has Given Up, Her Doubts about “Religious Faith” in God, and the Evisceration of Emma Watson.

We’ve come a long way since the hijacking-via-movie-adaptation of the first book in the series.

In that film we were presented with the Gamesmakers as heroes contrary to the point of Suzanne Collins’ brilliant take-down of the Capitol Cave shadow-casters in Hunger Games, the novel. Not to mention their casting per Hollywood formula buxom Jennifer Lawrence as Pippi Longstocking half-starved, pipe-cleaner shaped Katniss Everdeen.

Am I naive for hoping this fifth Hunger Games adaptation, the movie version of Sunrise on the Reaping, is at last getting the point of the stories, just in time for Haymitch Abernathy’s origin-story?

The trailer is encouraging, I think; there are hints at least that the film makers are going to let audiences see the anti-narrative rebellion of everyone’s favorite character in the original trilogy.

But I await Elizabeth Baird-Hardy’s expert opinion!

I have been talking about the literary alchemy of C. S. Lewis’ Ransom Trilogy of which That Hideous Strength is the finale since 2005 when I gave a talk on the subject at Dr Amy H. Sturgis‘ ‘Past Watchful Dragons’ conference at Belmont University on the ‘Fantasy and Faith’ of Lewis. I was invited at that gathering to speak to the New York C. S. Lewis Society in January 2008 on the same subject which led to a date in April 2010 at the Oklahoma City C. S. Lewis Society conference to revisit alchemy in outer space. That trip led to my family’s move to OKC, believe it or not, later that year.

It’s a subject dear to me and I hope that Annie Crawford’s talk about the third book’s ‘Cosmic Alchemy’ fosters an interest in the traditional and literary hermeticism in CSL’s work beyond and in tandem with the astrology.

Here are links to three Substack posts about literary alchemy which touch at least tangentially on Lewis’ occult artistry:

• Literary Alchemy: Sacred Science, Sacred Art, and ‘The Alembic of Story’ This is a draft chapter from my PhD thesis in which I explained the Perennialist view of metallurgical alchemy as a sacred science, non-liturgical story telling heavy in hermetic symbolism as sacred art, and why and how readers are transformed in the ‘Alembic of Story.’

• Metallurgical, Literary, and Psychological Alchemy: Is Jung a Good Guide for Understanding J. K. Rowling’s Artistry and Meaning? This podcast and article is valuable both for the succinct introduction in the discussion I have in it with Nick Jeffery of why writers, poets, and playwrights from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Lewis and Rowling have used alchemical symbolism (cf., the ten minutes beginning ~ 35:00 in the podcast) and for the bullet-point notes in the write-up beneath the video with a host of links.

• A Spirited Conversation about Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series and C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ This conversation with Nick Jeffery focuses on the correspondence with and differences between Lewis’ adaptation of Cupid and Psyche myth in his Till We Have Faces and Rowling-Galbraith’s in the Cormoran Strike novels. It begins, however, with a review of all the traditional Shed tools that Lewis and Rowling have in common, which include literary alchemy.

I share in the last one the story of how I learned about ring composition via my search of Lewis scholarship in 2010 to see if anything had been written about the hermeticism embedded in the Space Trilogy; there wasn’t, but, reading Sanford Schwartz’ C. S. Lewis on the Final Frontier: Science and the Supernatural in the Space Trilogy in that search, I was introduced to Lewis’ chiastic writing and to Mary Douglas which led directly to my writing Harry Potter as Ring Composition and Ring Cycle. Imagine Rowling Studies today if I hadn’t been exploring C. S. Lewis scholarship to learn more about her hermetic artistry and meaning; a very different place!

Let me know in the comment boxes below what you think of Annie Crawford’s ‘Cosmic Alchemy in That Hideous Strength‘ and my various pieces linked above! If you want my notes and Power Point slides on Lewis and alchemy, drop me a note at john at HogwartsProfessor dot com and I’ll send them on.

I began my post about the two Cupid and Psyche adaptations with several reasons reading Till We Have Faces is a very good investment of any Rowling fan’s time:

First, anything by C. S. Lewis rewards a close reading by any thoughtful person and lover of challenging modern writing (and, though Lewis is often dismissed as some kind of Christian dinosaur, he is a thoroughly modern writer). Faces was his last fiction piece, he and Tolkien thought it was his best, and it is a catharsis inducing masterpiece, frankly, that makes a more than generous return on any time invested in it.

Second, despite Rowling’s several digs at Lewis near the end of Potter Mania’s peak around the publication of Deathly Hallows, it would be hard to exaggerate the hat-tips and references to CSL’s Narniad in the Hogwarts Saga. Rowling’s efforts to diminish if not dismiss that influence have to be read in tandem with her earlier effusion of admiration for Lewis and his work. Her Christmas Pig, I think, can be read as her attempt — her wonderfully successful attempt, by the way, at least with respect to accessibility and humor — to out-do Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Reading Lewis is a good idea for the Serious Striker, then, because its a decent bet based on the postmodern writer’s track record that the bibliographical inspiration or Lake aspect of her work might be found in his writing.

Third, forget the Lake, Rowling’s Shed is filled with tools that Lewis used.

• Literary alchemy? Read his Space Trilogy.
• Ring composition? Every Chronicles of Narnia novel and Space Trilogy piece is chiastic.
• Psychomachia or Soul-Allegory? Pilgrim’s Regress, Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces.
• Genre Blend with Heavy Doses of Literary Allusion? Again, the Narniad and Space Trilogy.
• Christian symbolism? If Lewis is known for anything, loved by his fans and despised by his detractors, it is because of his “smuggling the Gospel” into his stories, not-so-subtly and supremely subtly (see Planet Narnia for exposition of the latter).

And to the point today, use of Classical myth as a story launching pad and template. Serious Strikers know that the Strike-Ellacott series is up to its eyeballs in mythic backdrops; think of Leda and the Swan, Castor and Pollux, Tisiphone and Artemis, and, the only one confirmed by the author via tweet, Cupid and Psyche. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces is a re-telling of this exact myth.

It’s not a direct match by any means. Lewis’ adaptation is fairly straight-forward (well, relative to Rowling-Galbraith’s). He re-tells the Cupid and Psyche myth from the perspective of one of Psyche’s supposedly jealous sisters. It’s still set in a mythic time and in a pagan or pre-Christian Greece (or thereabouts). Rowling uses the myth, in contrast, as a near invisible back-drop or atmosphere that informs her story, a subtle deployment that wasn’t noticed by readers until its reveal in Troubled Blood and Ink Black Heart (a revelation that wasn’t accepted by fandom until Rowling’s tweet post Hallmarked Man).

Nick Jeffery wondered if it was possible that Rowling-Galbraith used Till We Have Faces as something of a template’s template for her adaptation of Cupid and Psyche in her Strike novels. Read his C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part One) for his answer to the question, ‘Is Till We Have Faces the The Thematic Template for the ‘Strike-Ellacott’ Series?’

In my follow-up to Nick’s post, C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part Two), I shared the seven points of intersection I found in CSL’s 1956 adaptation and JKR’s eight Strellacott books: the underlying myth, Artemis and Aphrodite, the Pursuit of the Real, the Hidden Nature of Divinity, the Story Structure, the Meaning of ‘Faces,’ and the Eros-Anteros Distinction (what Lewis called ‘The False Cupid’ in his essays on Spenser).

In our subsequent discussion-podcast, A Spirited Conversation about Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series and C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces,’ we reviewed our findings and played pickle-ball with the subject of what Faces might suggest about the contents of Strike 9, tentatively titled Sleep Tight, Evangeline.

Nick and I will be talking about fan theories and Rowling’s Golden Threads this week and I will be writing about the literary alchemy of the Lions in Hallmarked Man as well as more notes about the plethora of names in Strike 8. I also hope to share the introduction to and TOC for my book in progress, Harry Potter for Grown-Ups: Volume 1 Philosopher’s Stone, and a chapter of the only book to my knowledge written exclusively about the Perennialist Theory of Literature, the school of thought best suited to grasping the traditional tools used by both Lewis and Rowling in their stories.

See you there!