The release of the final Harry Potter movie seemed like the end for many fans, but J.K. Rowling is apparently determined not to let it be so abrupt as all that. And though she’s currently working on a darkly comedic novel about the politics of small British towns, she’s also working on the project that’s been most frequently requested of her over the years: a Harry Potter encyclopedia.
With Pottermore finally ramping up to somewhere nearer fan expectations (I’ve been hearing many reports about the strange accuracy of its Sorting Hat all weekend), doubtless the feasibility of creating a HP encyclopedia has risen, due to Rowling churning out extra details for the site.
According to Yahoo, Rowling announced the details on her website in a FAQ section, though we’ve been unable to find the exact link. They quote her thusly:
For a long time I have been promising an encyclopaedia of Harry’s world, and I have started work on this now. Some of it forms the new content in Pottermore.
Then she reaffirmed, just for the record, that she has no current plans to write another novel set in the Harry Potter continuity, and that even if she did, she feels she’s wrapped up Harry’s story pretty well.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for the encyclopedia to release soon, however: Rowling’s still got a novel to finish by this fall, and it would be unreasonable to expect her to do serious work on another book in the meantime. In a related anecdote, I can’t find a link for it at the moment, but I seem to remember Rowling being quoted once as saying that she actually used fan-made wikis and online encyclopedias quite a bit while writing the Harry Potter series, simply to remember simple things like the last time she mentioned Padma Patil and whether she’d ever talked about Seamus’ eye color. Ironic, then, that she’s only making her own version of the ultimate Harry Potter database after she no longer needs it, for the fans that made the database she actually used.
(via Collider.)
