In regards to finding the forerunners of Harry Potter, I might suggest The Chronicles of Narnia. Other than that, I'd say look up some stuff about J.K. Rowling and find out what books she read, what she says her influences were.
Oh, and for popular literature, there are also the works of Agatha Christie. She's been cited (not sure how accurate it is) as the best-selling fiction writer of all time. Her forerunners might be easier to find.
edited 10th Oct '16 9:33:54 AM by Robbery
One of the Harry Potter series's most important forerunners is Tom Brown's School Days. The whole "growing up and learning about life at a boarding school" genre is nearly unique to Britain; lots of readers are unaware that the Potter series stands firmly within this trope, and stands at the end of a long lineage. For extra credit, check out the Billy Bunter series, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and Ronald Searle's "St. Trinian's girls" cartoons.
edited 11th Oct '16 10:44:24 AM by Jhimmibhob
I've read the "Narnia" books, some more than once, though I did not know about that genre Potter was apart of, so I'll definitely look into that.
There are three kinds of falsehoods. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. Analogy on this wiki is the various claimants to most popular book. The Bible(most copies sold), Quotations From Chairman Mao(most copies in print) or one of the Harry Potter installments(fastest selling).
But the analogy got me thinking. I had wanted an educated understanding of one of the big three, long before I ever discovered high speed internet and online wikis. I dabbled in some Hebrew, some Aramaic(people tell me it's "simple" but I don't think I ever had more trouble with a language), some Greek, modern and ancient. I've read on religions spawned directly from Christianity, (The Sunna trilogy, writings on Voodoo, Watchtower), the developments in Christianity ultimately deemed heretical(the Gnostics, The Manacheans), books Jews decided not to put in the Tanak(The "apocrypha", the "dead sea scrolls", Enoch) on religious text from related Semitic groups (such as what little the Mandaens made public), Semetic faith that lead to Judaism(what there is to read on the beliefs of the polytheistic Hebrews before they were conquered by the followers of YHWH)...I still have a lot of reading to do to get full perspective on The Bible. On what came before, what was written alongside, writings that came form it, but I'm in no rush for further pursuit.
But I don't know The Bible's current equivalents in the realms of government propaganda and entertaining fiction nearly as well. It shames me as a proud pessimist repulsed by Marxist brand communism almost as much as I am by Abraham derived religion. It shames me a contributor to TV Tropes, the wiki about writing fiction. So where do I look to get similar insight on Quotations From Chairman Mao? I've read the writings of Karl Marx, hell, I've watched performances from Karl Marx impersonators trying to convinced impressionable young college students he was really a good man who did absolute nothing to influence mass murder of peasants. I've had fierce debates with other proud pessimists who think fondly of Marx. I think I got some of the origin down, but what of the literary road from Marx to Mao? And are there any related Chinese writings that are not communist but equally important in the realm of origin? Parallels, the other communist leader's of Mao's day but again, anything Chinese that's not necessarily communist but growing out of kindred spirit of Mao's, or at least his collected quotations? What of succession? What grew out of it besides the media continually produced by his direct successors?
I don't have the slightest clue where to begin with Harry Potter(besides the books themselves, I am going to finish the series sometime. Just found Goblet Of Fire). This Very Wiki does have a fan fic recs page, as far as parallels and succession goes, but I'm stumped on published fiction...I have read Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, but there wasn't much to read there(I've seen thicker finger nails). It's ironic, being originally and entirely in English, it's where I imagine doing the least reading. Won't have to be going over dictionaries and reference books to make sure I didn't miss something that doesn't translate well.