https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2011/07/17/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-shallows/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usWed, 10 Jun 2026 07:58:38 -0400<![CDATA[Er, Hallows: Deathly Hallows. It was more than a decade ago that I heard about the Harry Potter series.  My  wife, who was the first adult in our neighborhood to become Potter Proud and Rowling Ready, told me about the clever Mrs. Rowling and her school full of witches, wizards, magical creatures, and spells. It sounded like a cross between Tom Brown’s Schooldays and J.R.R. Tolkien. The best thing about the former, I’ve always thought, was that it provided George MacDonald Fraser the inspiration  for his hilarious if also troubling “Flashman Series.” As for Tolkien, I think Edmund Wilson had it about right in his 1956 essay “Oo, Those Awful Orcs!” (“Certain people,” Wilson observed, “have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. They would not accept adult trash, but, confronted with the pre-teen-age article, they revert to the mental phase which delighted  in Elsie Dinsmore and Little Lord Fauntleroy.”)]]>Sun, 17 Jul 2011 09:25:29 -0400<![CDATA[Roger Kimball]]>https://pjmedia.com/roger-kimball/2011/07/17/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-shallows-n135909