[HPforGrownups] Parallels in other's fiction to that of JKR.

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 192423

On 6/10/2013 9:45 AM, John wrote:
> To avoid any confusion or controversy I'd strongly stress that in no way am I implying any plagiarism on the part of JK Rowling in the creation of her Wizarding World. Indeed I very strongly doubt that at the time she was writing her Harry Potter stories Jo Rowling was even aware of Zenna Henderson's works as she was long deceased, nor that she had any knowledge of her People tales.

     There have been tales of magical folk in our midst since the 
beginning of time. Henderson's People stories were about a humanoid 
alien race with powers whose planet was destroyed, so they try to 
intermix with humanity. Alexander Key wrote a book (later turned into a 
movie 3 times, not including sequels) called "Escape to Witch Mountain", 
which a lot of people thought was a rip-off of The People. And Zenna 
Henderson was not all that obscure; her works were VERY well-known, and 
she was one of the first women to write science fiction without hiding 
her gender.

     I have had the suspicion that JKR was also inspired by Marion 
Zimmer Bradley, another early prominent female science fiction/fantasy 
writer. In particular, Abe Dumbledore's fascination with goats seems to 
me to come from Bradley's Lythande series, where in one of stories the 
main character visits a town where the most common insult is to call 
someone a "despoiler of virgin goats", which later becomes an important 
plot point.

     Bart