For the first time, author J.K. Rowling’s original handwritten pages of “Harry Potter” series are to go on display at a book festival in Scotland.
The signed manuscripts, originally written as part of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, will be on show during the famous Book Festival in Wigtown popularly known as Scotland’s national book town.
The Ballard of Nearly Headless Nick — a ghost who haunts Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — was eventually edited out of the second book in the series before publication.
But fans of the stories, which Rowling started writing as a single mother living in Edinburgh, will be able to read the framed pages displayed at ReadingLasses bookshop in Wigtown, The Scotsman reported.
The shop, owned by Gerrie and Susan Douglas-Scott, and Bex Woodsford, focuses on books written by and about women.
“We are very exciting that this bit of Harry Potter is coming home to Scotland for 10 days,” Gerrie said. The manuscripts were originally donated by Rowling to the Scottish Language Dictionaries in 2005 to help fund a new Scottish language dictionary. They are now in hands of Ilyas Khan, a book collector and publisher of Asia Literary Review. The manuscripts have not previously been displayed in public.
Khan said: “The Asia Literary Review has supported a number of literary festivals, but I must say that I am particularly pleased to see us in Wigtown.”