On the headline, though, I think there are a lot of similarities between HP and older works because HP is merely the latest in a long and grand tradition of English boarding school stories, and a slightly less long sub-tradition of magical boarding school stories. It leans heavily on established genre tropes developed by writers like Enid Blyton, Sarah Fielding, Talbot Reed, the Jennings and Billy Bunter serieses, and so on.
There is also a tradition of "magical orphan discovers they're special and escapes from abusive situation" stories, one of which I distinctly remember involved a character named Harriet being locked in a coal cellar by her uncle when she refused to eat a disgusting rice pudding.
That said, I would be absolutely not surprised at all if it turns out JKR intentionally and knowingly committed plagiarism. One of the stories I read before HP was Groosham Grange, which is eerily similar in many oddly specific ways, but was published almost 10 years before the first Harry Potter book.
no subject
Interesting! I'll have to read it properly later.
On the headline, though, I think there are a lot of similarities between HP and older works because HP is merely the latest in a long and grand tradition of English boarding school stories, and a slightly less long sub-tradition of magical boarding school stories. It leans heavily on established genre tropes developed by writers like Enid Blyton, Sarah Fielding, Talbot Reed, the Jennings and Billy Bunter serieses, and so on.
There is also a tradition of "magical orphan discovers they're special and escapes from abusive situation" stories, one of which I distinctly remember involved a character named Harriet being locked in a coal cellar by her uncle when she refused to eat a disgusting rice pudding.
That said, I would be absolutely not surprised at all if it turns out JKR intentionally and knowingly committed plagiarism. One of the stories I read before HP was Groosham Grange, which is eerily similar in many oddly specific ways, but was published almost 10 years before the first Harry Potter book.