Short answers, pulled from the story.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published by Bloomsbury on the 26th of June 1997. It was published in the United States on the 1st of September 1998 by Scholastic under the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, after the American rights sold for US$105,000, a record for a children's book by an unknown author.
The Harry Potter series has sold more than 600 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling book series in history. The final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, alone sold 11 million copies in its first twenty-four hours on sale, including 2.7 million in the UK and 8.3 million in the US.
Rowling conceived Harry Potter in 1990 while on a delayed train from Manchester to London. She sat for four hours as details about a scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who did not know he was a wizard developed in her mind. She completed the manuscript in 1995, and it was rejected by twelve publishers before Bloomsbury agreed to publish it.
Rowling has identified death as the overarching theme of Harry Potter. Her mother died shortly after she began writing, and she has described Harry as the prism through which she views death. Love is the other central theme, with the series drawing a sharp contrast between Harry, whose soul is whole and nourished by love, and Voldemort, who divides his soul into seven Horcruxes to evade death.
Critical opinion is divided. Stephen King called the series a feat of which only a superior imagination is capable, while A. N. Wilson praised Rowling's Dickensian ability to make readers weep and laugh within a few pages of each other. In contrast, Yale scholar Harold Bloom said Rowling's mind is so governed by clichés she has no other style of writing, and A. S. Byatt called the books a secondary secondary world made up of patchworked derivative motifs.
A live-action Harry Potter television series was confirmed for HBO in April 2023, planned for seven seasons adapting one book per season. On the 25th of February 2025, American actor John Lithgow confirmed he was cast as Dumbledore. He acknowledged controversy over an American taking the role, given Rowling's insistence that the film series use British and Irish cast members.