Posted by Dave Thewlis on September 29, 2003 at 00:00:57 from 148.78.245.12 user dthewlis.
In Reply to: Re: Harry Potter posted by Jonathan Labaree on September 28, 2003 at 11:54:15:
A couple of comments about the US-ification of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Apparently the driving force for doing this was the U.S. publisher, Scholastic (obviously an oxymoron). I can't remember if they Americansed the spelling or not, but they certainly did words such as jumper-->sweater.
But they did indeed change Philosopher to Sorcerer. The generally quoted reason is that American kids couldn't handle words like "philosopher" and hadn't ever heard of the Philosopher's Stone. But an equally or more likely explanation is that by changing it to "Sorcerer's Stone" Scholastic was trying to ride on the general popularity of Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy gaming, comics, etc.
We read the American version of the first book before we realized what Scholastic had done; then we purchased the Bloomsbury editions from the U.K.