December 13th 2007
Harry Potter Book Magically Raises $3.9 Million For Charity
Filed under: books, donations — Michael Andre d'Estries @ 2:39 pm
It was expected to only sell for about $100,000. However, much like magical world from whence it came from, JK Rowling’s limited edition handwritten book defied all expectations. At an auction at Sotheby’s today, “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” fetched almost $4 million dollars. That price broke a number of records as the highest price ever achieved at auction for a modern literary manuscript, an auction record for a work by J.K. Rowling, and an auction record for a children’s book. The buyer, London art agent Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox, now has one of only seven copies of the illustrated work. From the article,
“The standing-room-only crowd at Sotheby’s auction house applauded as bidding topped the 1 million pound ($2 million) mark. The money will benefit The Children’s Voice, a charity co-founded in 2005 by Rowling and Baroness Nicholson, a member of Britain’s House of Lords. Rowling, 42, watched the auction on the Web from her home in Edinburgh, Scotland, and said she was ecstatic. ‘This will mean so much to children in desperate need of help,” she said in a statement. ‘It means Christmas has come early to me.’”
What a fantastic outcome. As we mentioned earlier, the book contains five fairy tales given to Potter character Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore in the final book of the series, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. Said Rowling, “‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’ is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I have loved and lived in for 17 years.”
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[...] Back in December of ‘07, a hand-written and illustrated original of “Bard” by JK Rowling sold for $3.9 million at auction. That price broke a number of records as the highest price ever achieved at auction for a modern literary manuscript, an auction record for a work by J.K. Rowling, and an auction record for a children’s book. Once more, all the money raised went to Rowling’s charity. [...]