The pressure to solve the puzzle quickly became intense, with fans suggesting rival interpretations. ‘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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