![]() ![]() ![]() ‘It’s not Dumbledore, it’s not Quirrell and it’s not Snape’,” he writes. Stumped for speedy inspiration, he writes, he drew a study of his own “magical” father, Robert, dressed in a pointy hat and smoking a large pipe. When Taylor was commissioned at the age of 23, he was asked to provide an extra image of a wizard for the back cover. The new hardback will be on sale for a year, and includes an explanation of a mystery that has long baffled the most devoted readers. Twenty-five years on, and Taylor’s cover has become one of the most recognisable images in world literature. It had seemed like a good warm-up job for an aspiring young illustrator: create some artwork for a new children’s book about a schoolboy wizard. I was a newly graduated art student back in 1996, and looking for my first break in illustration.” “But that is because nowadays it’s hard to imagine a time when no one had heard of Harry Potter at all. “I’m often asked if I was paralysed by the pressure of producing the cover art for the very first edition,” Taylor, 48, says. Thomas Taylor’s back cover for the first edition: the mysterious wizard, based on his father (and later replaced by an image of Dumbledore) does indeed have a hedgehog in his pocket, Taylor confirms. ![]()
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