| In 1997, the first book of a story series named Harry Potter written by British woman writer J. K. Rowling began to be published in British market. Within three years after its first publication, the story series had been at the top bestseller lists, winning the title of "fastest-selling book in history" for several times. Now the series has become a phenomenon in the history of modern publication. With over a quarter of a billion books sold, the books have been translated into 61 languages and distributed in over 200 countries. Since its publication, the series has also won many awards including the British Book Awards, Children's Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize. And the writer, J. K. Rowling turns from an ordinary single mother living on public assistance into a household name in the West. Harry Potter's unprecedented success in book-selling makes it a hot topic among literary critics. Some literacy critics comment that the writer uses classic narrative devices with flair and originality and delivers a complex and demanding plot in the form of a hugely entertaining thriller and consider the series as a richly textured first novel given lift-off by an inventive wit. However, quite a few of literary experts on juvenile literature openly state their worries that Harry Potter stories advocate too much about violence and the evil side of our society, thus seriously damage the children's perspective on our real world. Whether people like or dislike the stories, we are unable to deny the fact that it has been the favorite books among children and some adult persons.In modern society, with the fast development of the diverse kinds of electronic media, traditional literary works and literary reading become to be forgotten by the materialized people including the children. However, just in this setting, Harry Potter books set off an unprecedented upsurge of book-selling and literary reading. Thus, in some degree, it is the Harry Potter series that has saved contemporary literature. And the reasons for its wild popularity greatly deserve our discussion.In fact, a lot of readers and critics have noticed this point. However, taking a look at most of the critiques of the novels, we have found that the focus is no more than such topics as the pedagogic dealing with linguistic skills, languages acquisition, characterization, and the theme of conflict between the good and the evil. In some degree, these critiques put much more emphasis on the interior reasons which is around the text itself than on the exterior reasons about its societal acceptance. And even the analysis on the text itself, they are just to explore one or two features they think the most remarkable. Thus, all these explanations are not at all comprehensive and systematic to explain themagic of the Harry Potter series.This thesis is composed of three parts. The first part presents a brief introduction to the popularity obtained by the Harry Potter series and the life experience of the writer as well as the synopsis of the seven books. Part Two probes into the secret to the success of the book series from two aspects. One is about the interior causes and its analysis will be made especially from the perspective of the artistic skills in the books, such as plot, setting, characters and characterization and so on. The other is on the exterior causes-the cultural and literary ground for the creation of the books as well as the readers' acceptance. The conclusion functions on the one hand as an emphasis in digging out the causes for the success of the series, on the other hand, it also points out the author's limitation in comprehending and analyzing the books, leaving much to be studied further in the future.
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