It follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday when he receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

[1][2] Most reviews were very favourable, commenting on Rowling's imagination, humour, simple, direct style and clever plot construction, although a few complained that the final chapters seemed rushed.

The writing has been compared to that of Jane Austen, one of Rowling's favourite authors; Roald Dahl, whose works dominated children's stories before the appearance of Harry Potter; and the ancient Greek story-teller Homer.

Harry Potter lives with his abusive uncle and aunt, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and their bullying, spoiled son, Dudley.

Harry, Ron and Hermione learn that the three-headed dog is guarding a magical object called the Philosopher's Stone, which grants its user immortality.

Rowling imagined him as a "scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard"[3] and says she transferred part of her pain about losing her mother to him.

[5] Rowling has described Hermione as a "very logical, upright and good" character with "a lot of insecurity and a great fear of failure beneath her swottiness".

[7] His right hand is severe Minerva McGonagall, the friendly half-giant Rubeus Hagrid, who saved Harry from the Dursley family and the sinister Severus Snape.

The main antagonists are Draco Malfoy, an elitist, bullying classmate,[9] and Lord Voldemort, the most powerful evil wizard who becomes disembodied when he tries to kill baby Harry.

[8] Rowling spent six years working on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and after it was accepted by Bloomsbury, she obtained a grant of £8,000 from the Scottish Arts Council, which enabled her to plan the sequels.

[14] In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 500 copies in hardback, three hundred of which were distributed to libraries.

)[18] The short initial print run was standard for first novels and Cunningham hoped booksellers would read the book and recommend it to customers.

[27] Platform 9+3⁄4, from which the Hogwarts Express left London, was commemorated in the real-life King's Cross railway station with a sign and a trolley apparently passing through the wall.

However, Nel considered that Scholastic's translations were considerably more sensitive than most of those imposed on British English books of the time and that some other changes could be regarded as useful copyedits.

[36] Although The Boston Globe and Michael Winerip in The New York Times complained that the final chapters were the weakest part of the book,[20][37] they and most other American reviewers gave glowing praise.

[41] For the fifteenth anniversary of the books, Scholastic re-released Sorcerer's Stone, along with the other six novels in the series, with new cover art by Kazu Kibuishi in 2013.

However, in Nel's opinion Rowling's humour is more based on caricature and the names she invents are more like those found in Charles Dickens's stories,[20]: 13–15  and Amanda Cockrell noted that many of these express their owners' traits through allusions that run from ancient Roman mythology to eighteenth-century German literature.

Nel also noted that, like many good writers for children, Rowling combines literary genres‍—‌fantasy, young adult fiction, boarding school stories, Bildungsroman and many others.

For example, the hero of James and the Giant Peach lost his parents and had to live with a pair of unpleasant aunts‍—‌one fat and one thin rather like Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, who treated Harry as a servant.

[14] Librarian Nancy Knapp and marketing professor Stephen Brown noted the liveliness and detail of descriptions, especially of shop scenes such as Diagon Alley.

[51] Stephen King admired "the sort of playful details of which only British fantasists seem capable" and concluded that they worked because Rowling enjoys a quick giggle and then moves briskly forward.

[54] Nicholas Tucker described the early Harry Potter books as looking back to Victorian and Edwardian children's stories: Hogwarts was an old-style boarding school in which the teachers addressed pupils formally by their surnames and were most concerned with the reputations of the houses with which they were associated; characters' personalities were plainly shown by their appearances, starting with the Dursleys; evil or malicious characters were to be crushed rather than reformed, including Argus Filch's cat Mrs Norris; and the hero, a mistreated orphan who found his true place in life, was charismatic and good at sports, but considerate and protective towards the weak.

[56] However Karin Westerman drew parallels with 1990s Britain: a class system that was breaking down but defended by those whose power and status it upheld; the multi-ethnic composition of Hogwarts' students; the racial tensions between the various intelligent species; and school bullying.

As a side-effect Harry and Hermione, who were brought up in the highly regulated Muggle world, find solutions by thinking in ways unfamiliar to wizards.

For example, Hermione notes that one obstacle to finding the Philosopher's Stone is a test of logic rather than magical power, and that most wizards have no chance of solving it.

[58] Nel suggested that the unflattering characterisation of the extremely conventional, status-conscious, materialistic Dursleys was Rowling's reaction to the family policies of the British government in the early 1990s, which treated the married heterosexual couple as the "preferred norm", while the author was a single mother.

This is reflected in his happiness whenever he is a temporary member of the Weasley family throughout the series, and in his treatment of first Rubeus Hagrid and later Remus Lupin and Sirius Black as father-figures.

Writing about clinical teaching in medical schools, Jennifer Conn contrasted Snape's technical expertise with his intimidating behaviour towards students.

Quidditch coach Madam Hooch on the other hand illustrated useful techniques in the teaching of physical skills, including breaking down complex actions into sequences of simple ones and helping students to avoid common errors.

Brown advised marketing executives to be less preoccupied with rigorous statistical analyses and the "analysis, planning, implementation, and control" model of management.