33 works across 28 centuries, back to Iliad and Odyssey.
Following one thread, 7 works from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to The Hebrew Bible. Back to all 33 works
1997
J. K. Rowling
Late 20th century. Britain. written in English.
An orphan raised by cruel relatives learns at eleven that he is a wizard and enters Hogwarts, a boarding school for magic, where he and two friends uncover a plot to steal an alchemical stone that grants immortality. It joins the British boarding-school story to the English children's fantasy tradition and sets the plot up as a clue-planted mystery.
1906
E. Nesbit
Edwardian. England. written in English.
Third book about five London children and the wish-granting Psammead, who travel through time to ancient Egypt, Babylon and Atlantis in search of the missing half of a magic amulet.
Stylistic influence, probable.
Rowling has said she identifies with E. Nesbit more than with any other writer. The Psammead books gave her a model of magic intruding on an ordinary household, told with brisk comic narration that plays the children's practicality against wonder.
Thematic kinship, probable.
In Surprised by Joy Lewis singled out Nesbit's trilogy, especially The Amulet, as a childhood favourite that taught him about the past. Narnia opens, as Nesbit's books do, with ordinary siblings in a London-era household who stumble into magic.
1882
F. Anstey
Victorian. England. written in English.
Comic novel in which a magic stone makes a businessman and his schoolboy son swap bodies, sending the father to his son's boarding school. It placed magic inside an ordinary middle-class household.
Stylistic influence, probable.
Anstey showed how a single magic object could cause comic havoc in a respectable modern household, played for social comedy rather than wonder. Critics of Nesbit, including her biographer Julia Briggs, name Anstey among the writers whose domestic-magic comedy she took up in the Psammead books.
1857
Thomas Hughes
Victorian. England. written in English.
Novel of a boy's years at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold, covering house loyalty, sport, bullying and moral growth. It fixed the conventions of the boarding-school story.
Structural model, probable.
Rowling's novel follows the boarding-school pattern Hughes set: arrival by train, sorting into houses with fierce loyalty, a house competition, a bullying rival in the Flashman mould, and a sport (rugby there, Quidditch here) that carries the climaxes of the school year. The newcomer befriended by a bold boy and steadied by a more scrupulous one recurs in Harry, Ron and Hermione.
Thematic kinship, probable.
Anstey sends his body-swapped father into Dr Grimstone's boarding school, a comic version of the world Hughes had idealised. The fagging, fights and masters' tyranny are the school-story conventions turned to farce.
c. 70 (Mark)
Anonymous (attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, John)
Early Roman Empire. Roman Palestine and eastern Mediterranean. written in Koine Greek.
Four accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, centred on a sacrificial death for others.
Direct source, well documented.
Aslan's surrender to the Witch in place of the traitor Edmund, his mocking and killing on the Stone Table and his return at dawn retell the Passion and Resurrection. Lewis described Narnia as imagining how Christ might appear in another world.
Thematic kinship, probable.
Hughes wrote as a Christian Socialist, and the Gospel ethic of sacrifice and courage drives the book's moral turn. The scene where the frail George Arthur kneels to pray in a dormitory of jeering boys, and Tom then defends him, is built on New Testament teaching.
c. 250 BCE (Torah)
Anonymous
Hellenistic. Ptolemaic Alexandria. written in Koine Greek.
Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures made for the Jewish community of Alexandria.
Direct source, well documented.
The Gospel writers quote the Hebrew scriptures mostly in the Greek of the Septuagint. Their accounts of Jesus are framed as fulfilment of those quoted prophecies.
c. 500 BCE (major compilation)
Anonymous
Iron Age to Persian period. Judah and Babylonian exile. written in Hebrew.
Scriptures of ancient Israel, including the Torah, prophets such as Isaiah with its suffering servant, and wisdom writings.
Direct source, well documented.
The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, beginning with the Torah, made for Alexandrian Jews who no longer read Hebrew.
This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.
