Harry Potter exhibition sells record 30,000 advance tickets

The British Library has revealed that its Harry Potter exhibition has sold more than 30,000 tickets - the highest number of advance tickets it has ever sold for an exhibition.

“Harry Potter: A History of Magic”, will open at the institution in London’s Kings Cross on Friday (20th October) promising “previously unseen material from the Bloomsbury archive and J K Rowling", from a collaboration between the publisher and the library’s curators.

Ben Sanderson, the library’s head of press and communications, told The Bookseller: “Ahead of opening, "Harry Potter: A History of Magic" has already sold over 30,000 tickets - the highest amount of advance tickets ever sold for a British Library exhibition.”

Rebecca McNally, publishing director of children's books at Bloomsbury, revealed her "spine started tingling" during the planning stages in 2015 when the library team unrolled the Ripley Scroll, a "beautiful six-metre artefact showing the making of a Philosopher’s Stone".

Visitors are invited to “see the gargantuan 16th–century Ripley Scroll that explains how to create a Philosopher’s Stone, gaze at Sirius in the night sky as imagined by medieval astronomers, encounter hand-coloured pictures of dragons, unicorns and a phoenix rising from the flames”. Original drafts and drawings by Rowling and her illustrator Jim Kay will also be on display.

It was also revealed in June, when the series celebrated its 20th anniversary, that two books would be published by Bloomsbury and Pottermore to accompany the exhibition on the day of its opening. Harry Potter: A History of Magic, a £30 hardback with full-colour illustrations, will be the official book of the exhibition, while paperback Harry Potter: A Journey Through a History of Magic (£12.99) will be “aimed at a family audience”.

McNally said: "We first approached the British Library with the idea of an exhibition in January 2015, as we were pulling together our plans for the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I had no idea whether we’d be able to make an exhibition work – until an early meeting with Julian Harrison [the exhibition's lead curator], when they began to unroll the Ripley Scroll and my spine started tingling as they revealed this beautiful six-metre artefact showing the making of a Philosopher’s Stone." 

She added: "Since then it’s been a really remarkable adventure, watching their brilliant curatorial team as they began to explore the magical items in the BL’s collection and put together an exhibition that places the magic we know from the Harry Potter stories in a cultural and historical context. For anyone whose curiosity is tickled by the arcane and the beautiful and wants to glimpse some very special pieces of Harry Potter history, this is going to be a wonderful and imagination-stirring experience."

Rowling has sold 36.6 million books for £293m. The hardback edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is her biggest seller, with 3.04 million copies sold, and is the most valuable book since records began, bringing in nearly £34m (all figures according to Nielsen BookScan). 

The exhibition will run until 28th February 2018. Tickets are available to buy from the British Library website.