“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, keeping a stiff upper lip over clenched teeth, swept into Manhattan federal court yesterday to tear into a US publisher’s plans to release an unauthorized Potter encyclopedia.
“I really don’t want to cry, because I’m British,” the billionaire sniffled in answer to how she felt about the bespectacled boy wizard, who has made her one of the richest women in the world.
“It’s like asking, ‘How do you feel about your child?’ “
Rowling claimed she was nervous about her starring role as the first witness in her lawsuit against RDR Books, but she had so many lawyers and bodyguards in tow, it looked as if she were expecting an attack by Lord Voldemort.
Court officers even took the over-the-top step of locking the doors after she made her rock-star-like entrance.
“These books, they saved me, not just in the material sense,” said Rowling, who was dressed in a brown pinstriped suit and wore a charm bracelet dangling characters from her books.
“There was a time when they saved my sanity.”
The writer and Warner Bros. are seeking to stop publication of an unauthorized encyclopedia of characters by longtime fan Steve Vander Ark, who operates a popular Harry Potter Web site.
Blasting Vander Ark and his lexicon as “sloppy” and “lazy,” Rowling, 42, accused the writer of “wholesale theft” by rearranging her characters and descriptions in alphabetical order, while adding nearly no commentary or analysis.
The author said she feels “betrayed” by Vander Ark, and “bitterly” regrets once giving his fan site an award.
“The idea of my readership, parents parting with their hard-earned cash for this, I think it’s a travesty,” she harrumphed.
Rowling recounted her own rags-to-riches tale, detailing how she and her first daughter depended on welfare as she wrote the initial book and sometimes chose between food and typewriter ribbons.
The author said she is “flabbergasted” and “astonished” by the success of her seven-book series, which has old more than 375 million copies worldwide.
Rowling said Vander Ark’s book derails not only her plans for writing her own encyclopedia, the proceeds of which she’d promised to charity, but a new novel as well.
“The demands of this court case have been such that it’s caused me to halt work on the novel I am writing. It’s really decimated my creative work over the last month,” Rowling said.
“You lose the threads. You worry if you will be able to pick them up again in exactly the same way,” she said. “It’s certainly caused harm to my writing process currently.
“This is very personal to me,” Rowling added, explaining why she chose to travel from Scotland to testify in person and declined an offer by Judge Robert Patterson – who is deciding the case without a jury – to submit a taped deposition.
“Seventeen years of my work are being exploited here,” Rowling said. “This is the reason I flew here.”
RDR lawyer Anthony Falzone depicted Rowling as a megalomaniac who is “used to exercising full power and complete control” over Harry Potter’s world.
Falzone told the judge in opening statements that the author wrongly believes she has the “power to make the lexicon disappear from our world.” RDR’s lawyers claim the reference book makes “fair use” of Rowling’s writings.
As she exited the courthouse with her entourage in tow, Rowling intoned:
“There are lots of books in many languages that comment on or criticize Harry Potter, and that’s fine. But the book in this case is different. It takes far too much and it offers precious little in return.”
She then, expressed gratitude to fans everywhere before her bodyguards whisked her off to a sedan, swatting at photographers as they went.