<P> The main antagonists are Draco Malfoy, an elitist, bullying classmate and Lord Voldemort, the most powerful evil wizard who becomes disembodied when he tries to kill baby Harry . According to a 1999 interview with Rowling, the character of Voldemort was created as a literary foil for Harry, and his backstory was intentionally not fleshed - out at first: </P> <P> The basic idea...Harry, I saw Harry very very very clearly . Very vividly . And I knew he didn't know he was a wizard . (...) And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was . (...) When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him . He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him . (...) And--so--but for some mysterious reason, the curse didn't work on Harry . So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since . </P> <P> The book, which was Rowling's debut novel, was written between approximately June 1990 and some time in 1995 . In 1990 Jo Rowling, as she preferred to be known, wanted to move with her boyfriend to a flat in Manchester and in her words, "One weekend after flat hunting, I took the train back to London on my own and the idea for Harry Potter fell into my head...A scrawny, little, black - haired, bespectacled boy became more and more of a wizard to me...I began to write Philosopher's Stone that very evening . Although, the first couple of pages look nothing like the finished product ." Then Rowling's mother died and, to cope with her pain, Rowling transferred her own anguish to the orphan Harry . Rowling spent six years working on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and after it was accepted by Bloomsbury, she obtained a grant of £ 8,000 from the Scottish Arts Council, which enabled her to plan the sequels . She sent the book to an agent and a publisher, and then the second agent she approached spent a year trying to sell the book to publishers, most of whom thought it was too long at about 90,000 words . Barry Cunningham, who was building a portfolio of distinctive fantasies by new authors for Bloomsbury Children's Books, recommended accepting the book, and the eight - year - old daughter of Bloomsbury's chief executive said it was "so much better than anything else". </P> <P> Bloomsbury accepted the book, paying Rowling a £ 2,500 advance, and Cunningham sent proof copies to carefully chosen authors, critics and booksellers in order to obtain comments that could be quoted when the book was launched . He was less concerned about the book's length than about its author's name, since the title sounded like a boys' book to him, and he believed boys preferred books by male authors . Rowling therefore adopted the nom de plume J.K. Rowling just before publication . In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print - run of 500 copies in hardback, three hundred of which were distributed to libraries . Her original name, "Joanne Rowling", can be found in small print on the copyright page of this first British edition . (The 1998 first American edition would remove reference to "Joanne" completely .) The short initial print run was standard for first novels, and Cunningham hoped booksellers would read the book and recommend it to customers . Examples from this initial print run have sold for as much as US $33,460 in a 2007 Heritage Auction . </P>

Why is harry potter and the philosopher's stone
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