The Guardian names Harry Potter "icons of the decade"

[Michael]

Both statistically and artistically, it's unlikely, in any given decade, that a new British fictional character will emerge to match the name-recognition, sales and cinematic bankability of Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. But Harry Potter became the first new global superhero of the 21st century, with JK Rowling following JM Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming as a writer who has created a character with universal appeal.

I should point out that this authorial quartet share an intriguing biographical detail: Barrie and Conan Doyle were born in Scotland, Fleming was Anglo-Scottish and Rowling wrote most of the Potter books in Edinburgh. So perhaps the key to an immortal protagonist is a Caledonian connection.

But there must be other reasons that Harry Potter was able to rewrite so many rules of publishing: leading the New York Times to introduce a separate children's bestseller list and bookshops to open at midnight on publication day, selling 11m copies of the final volume within 24 hours in Britain and the US.

Read the full article here.

I guess people can stop fussing over whether to call 2000-2009 the "Ought Decade" and just start calling it the "Potter Years".