Due to my close ties with the UK, including a vigorous reading of British periodicals of both the natural history as well as the literary genres, I was one of the “early adopters,” (as they say in the ad biz) of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels who didn’t live in Great Britain. Securing, reading, and thoroughly enjoying the small, boldly colored hardcover edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as published by Bloomsbury UK, I quickly began telling – as did my wife, who also found the book a true delight – anyone who would listen about this superb new book I had shipped over from a bookseller in England.
However when the US edition was subsequently published by Scholastic the following year, I was somewhere between surprised and appalled at how not only the original cover (which I found perfectly suited to the story) but the very title itself had been changed to the curiously ahistorical Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Changing the cover artwork, and even enlarging the overall physical dimensions of the book were not, to my way of thinking, much to the benefit of the work (it has since, it must be noted, been changed multiple times into multiple editions in both the US and the UK, none the betterment of it – so say I – but some decidedly less troubling than others), but why in the the name of Hermes Trismegistus would the “philosopher’s stone” – a mysterious object of much historical inquiry and legend – be changed to the “sorcerer’s stone?”
Needless to write, I railed and ranted accordingly against this dumbing down of a beloved book to all who would listen to or read my words. Why was the decision made to change the size of the book? What was the reason to switch from the colorful but gentle cover image of a pensive, thoughtful Harry in front of the now iconic Hogwarts Express locomotive engine to the more angular, action-oriented image of Harry flying through one of the arches of the Hogwarts Castle bridge? And who in the vast muggle world thought that it was a good idea to remove the reference to the famous “philosopher’s stone” and replace it with the essentially meaningless “sorcerer’s stone?”
I have long since arrived at answers to all these questions – some of which are not particularly flattering to the social and intellectual realities of my natal country – but the episode itself instilled in me a particular interest in the variations to be found between different national editions of books. As I travel extensively for my occupation (or at least I did in the Before Times – prior to 2020) and possess both a strongly motivating instinct as well as a well-honed ability to locate any bookshop within a reachable radius to my place of temporary habitation in any location visited, I have been regularly confronted with variations on the themes of book covers. And while I am well aware of the old maxim never to judge a book by its cover, the truth is that we all do, otherwise publishers wouldn’t take so many pains to design them as they do.
Therefore I thought it might be interesting to some of my readers if I take up occasional critiques of cover and title variations between different national editions of works of natural history that happen to come to my attention. All these will be published in the column “By Its Cover” here in The Well-read Naturalist. I very much hope that they will inspire increased awareness, reflection, and perhaps even occasional comment upon the subject.
