J.K. Rowling has a lot on her plate! Not only is she working on her first adult novel, ‘The Casual Vacancy,’ her Pottermore site has just gone public and she has already started working on a Harry Potter Encyclopedia.

The long awaited encyclopedia has been something fans of the young wizard have been waiting for a while now. If you recall, in 2008, Rowling took the American publisher RDR Books to court over their plans to publish ‘Harry Potter Lexicon,’ an unauthorized reference book of their own.  She called the book a “wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work” (i.e a rip off) and won her case.

In the FAQ section on her official website, this is what Rowling had to say about the encyclopedia:

“For a long time I have been promising an encyclopedia of Harry’s world, and I have started work on this now – some of it forms the new content in Pottermore. It is likely to be a time-consuming job, but when finished I shall donate all royalties to charity.”

While the news made many fans cheer, it was tempered by her response to the question about whether or not there would be another Harry Potter book:

“I have always refused to say ‘never’ to this question, because I think it would be foolish to rule out something I might want to do in a few years’ time. However, I have no immediate plans to write another Harry Potter novel, and I do think that I have rounded off Harry’s story in the seven published books.”

In other words, that ship has sailed.

Donating her royalties to charity is not something new to Rowling as she did the same with her spin off book ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’. One can hope that she hasn’t given up on the entire Potter world as ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’ was a great teaser of what Rowling could create without having Harry as the central character.

While there are many sites and Wikis about Harry Potter, having Rowling herself write the encyclopedia will not only make it become the foremost definitive reference book about the subject, but will most likely have additions that fans don’t know about much like on her Pottermore site.

And speaking of Pottermore, if you haven’t heard already, the site is now open to the public and anyone can register to play. It expands on the Harry Potter world with Rowling adding a plethora of additional information not found in her books. Just wait until you read McGonagall’s backstory!

Rowling didn’t give a date as to when fans can expect the encyclopedia to be published so in the meantime, we’ll just have to settle on playing in Pottermore. And if you happen to be on the site, let me know what your magical user name is and we can be friends!

Source: The Guardian