what is the name of the first harry potter novel?
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
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 Harry Potter is a series of fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling . The novels chronicle the life of a young wizard , Harry Potter , and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley , all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry . The main story arc concerns Harry 's struggle against Lord Voldemort , the Dark wizard who intends to become immortal , overthrow the Ministry of Magic , subjugate non @-@ magic people ( Muggles ) and destroy anyone who stands in his way . 

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 Of the first three books in the series , Prisoner of Azkaban took the shortest amount of time to write – Philosopher 's Stone took five years to complete and Chamber of Secrets required two years , while Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was written in one year . Rowling 's favourite aspect of this book was introducing the character Remus Lupin , Rowling additionally said that Prisoner of Azkaban was " the best writing experience I ever had ... I was in a very comfortable place writing ( number ) three . Immediate financial worries were over , and press attention wasn 't yet by any means excessive " . 

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 Born in Yate , Gloucestershire , England , Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990 . The seven @-@ year period that followed saw the death of her mother , birth of her first child , divorce from her first husband and relative poverty until she finished the first novel in the series , Harry Potter and the Philosopher 's Stone , in 1997 . There were six sequels , the last , Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , in 2007 . Since then , Rowling has written four books for adult readers , The Casual Vacancy ( 2012 ) and — under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith — the crime fiction novels The Cuckoo 's Calling ( 2013 ) , The Silkworm ( 2014 ) and Career of Evil ( 2015 ) . 

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 A crime novel series by James Whitworth is set in Whitby . The first two novels are Death 's Disciple and The Eve of Murder . 

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 The series was originally published in English by two major publishers , Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom and Scholastic Press in the United States . A play , Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , based on a story by Rowling , is set to première in London on 30 July 2016 at the Palace Theatre , and its script will subsequently be published by Little , Brown as the eighth book in the series . The original seven books were adapted into an eight @-@ part film series by Warner Bros. Pictures , which has become the second highest @-@ grossing film series of all time as of August 2015 . The franchise has also generated much tie @-@ in merchandise , making the Harry Potter brand worth in excess of $ 15 billion . 
