JKR influenced by Frankenstein? Stone and Elixir

[Caius Marcius <coriolan_cmc@hotmail.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51778

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "bookworm417 <bookworm-
417 at c...>" <bookworm-417 at c...> wrote:
 I'm a high school student 
> and had never heard of the philosopher's stone or elixir of life 
> until HP; I assumed JKR had made them up!  Are they common 
> fictional elements or historical objects or....?
> 
> ~Alicia~
> Who was amazed and ecstatic to find a HP parallel in 
> school-required reading and still has MANY pages to read 
> before a "Did you read? quiz" tomorrow 3rd period.

Nicholas Flamel (1326-1410???) was an actual person: see here for a 
detailed bio 

http://www.alchemylab.com/flamel.htm


And to give you give you another literary example: in Gabriel Garcia 
Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), the protean patriarch 
of the Buendia family, Jose Arcadio Buendia, tries to create (without 
success) the Philosopher's Stone in his rudimentary laboratory deep 
in the Columbian jungle. (the episode is recounted in the book's 
second chapter)

   - CMC