When Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in 1997, no one could have predicted just how huge a franchise it would become.

Selling her first manuscript for £100,000, JK Rowling's success was making headlines from the very beginning as this article from July 1997 shows.

The release in 1999 of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban the third book in the series, cemented Potter's arrival into literary history.

It immediately shot to the top of the Amazon bestseller charts based on the huge numbers of advance orders it had received.

... earning Harry his very own Pass notes in February 1999.

Potter Mania had well and truly taken hold. Even the Guardian leader writers got in on the act with this editorial from 1999, reproducing letters written to the 'Wizard Weekly'.