51H2Jitwo7L. Ss500 It had to happen. The hitherto ultra limited edition (seven handmade copies) of The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be released for Muggles everywhere this December:

Fans around the world have been clamouring to read the wizarding fairy tales?created, handwritten and illustrated by J K Rowling – since last December, when Amazon famously bid £1.95 million / $4 million for the charity copy, one of only seven in existence, at Sotheby’s in London.

The Children’s High Level Group will publish three editions of the book, all in the English language, to be printed and distributed by Bloomsbury, Scholastic and Amazon. The Bloomsbury and Scholastic editions (£6.99 / $12.99) will feature additional commentary on each fairy tale from Professor Dumbledore and an introduction by J K Rowling. Amazon will produce up to a maximum of 100,000 Collector’s Edition copies (£50 / $100), which will aim to closely replicate the look and feel of the original ‘Beedle’. All editions will go on sale on Thursday 4 December 2008.


Net proceeds from sales of the book will all go to charity. According to author J.K. Rowling:

“There was understandable disappointment among Harry Potter fans when only one copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard was offered to the public last December. I am therefore delighted to announce that, thanks to the generous support of Bloomsbury, Scholastic and Amazon (who bought the handwritten copy at auction) – and with the blessing of the wonderful people who own the other six original books – The Tales of Beedle the Bard will now be widely available to all Harry Potter fans. Royalties will be donated to the Children’s High Level Group, to benefit institutionalised children in desperate need of a voice. The new edition will include the Tales themselves, translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, and with illustrations by me, but also notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore, which appear by generous permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters’ Archive.”


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1 COMMENT

  1. Did Hermione translate the runes before Dumbledore died? I must have missed that section of the Half-Blood Prince. Or maybe dead Headmasters can make notes.

  2. From Wikipedia: SPOILER ALERT

    “The Tales of Beedle the Bard also is a plot device in the seventh novel of the Harry Potter series, Deathly Hallows, in which it is bequeathed to Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore.” The book is part of Dumbledore’s will.

  3. Yay! Hopefully it’ll remind all those “Twilight” fans that their book series isn’t the only one out there. Somehow the furor over the”Twilight” series is a little spooky to me, but then I always had a thing against vampires.

    Anyway, looks like this’ll be the Christmas gift for the holiday season! Hopefully Mrs. Rowling has more stuff planned soon.

  4. Knowing how awful retail sales are right, I, for one, am quite happy that Ms. Rowling is publishing another book this year. (And, for you completists, be sure to pick up the Tenth Anniversary edition of HPatSS in September. Only ten years? *SIGH*)

    She has spoken about writing a regular mystery novel next.

    As a fanboy, I encourage “furor” whenever it is positive. It might not be my cuppa, but I do enjoy people who are passionate about books of any sort. (Even “The Anarchist’s Cookbook”, within reason.)

    And vampires are people too… at least in the Harry Potter universe.

  5. It’s not the vampires in the TWILIGHT books that’s icky – it’s the creepy S&M submissive vibe that so many of the teenage girl readers and their moms have fallen for. The heroine of the book has no identity other than swooning all over her creepy vampire boyfriend and needs to be rescued by him all the time.

    It sets feminism back over 30 years.