Original American covers – illustrated by Mary GrandPré
New American – illustrated by Kazu Kibuishi
Bloomsbury signature – designed by Clare Melinsky
UK Children – illustrated by Thomas Taylor
UK Adult – designed by Michael Wildsmith
UK Adult – designed by Andrew Davidson
Penguin Classics style – designed by M.S Corley
French – designed by Jean-Claude Gotting
French Adult – designed by Gallimard
Danish – designed by Per Jorgensen
Dutch – designed by Ien Van Laanen
Dutch Pocket Edition
German – illustrated by Sabine Wilharm
German Adult
Swedish – illustrated by Alvaro Tapia
Chinese
Finnish – illustrated by Mika Launis
Italian – illustrated by Serena Liglietti
Ukraine – illustrated by Vladyslav Yerko
Spanish – illustrated by Dolores Avendano
New Russian
Japanese
Bloomsbury covers will always be my fav. They were the first covers I saw.
Me too
The original American covers. Always.
I obviously adore the American covers because they are the ones I grew up with. But, I also really love the simplicity of the Penguin Classic covers. I’m also find the Ukraine covers to be really neat. But oh my gosh…the Finnish covers are so goofy-looking to me. They’re noses are huge!
Does it bother anyone else that the Penguin Classics are in the wrong order? 🙂
The original USA covers will always be very special to me, as that is how I was first introduced to the books. But so many of the various covers are so beautiful!
Love the Swedish & Dutch. The German is like, the ultimate Self-Portrait Collection. And the Danish is the 1980s Choose Your Own Adventure set, which, if you think about it, is kind of perfect.
Reblogged this on The 100 Greatest Books Challenge and commented:
What could be better than Harry Potter? EVERY HARRY POTTER EVER, obviously. Check out these Harry Potter book covers from around the world.
This is so interesting! I like the New American versions the best.
Reblogged this on DarkGrinningCat and commented:
Very interessting. 🙂
Thank you for this! I’ve been trying to collect them all for ages.
UK childerens for me they’re the ones that I first saw, but all the covers have their own magic within them. It’s very interesting to see each countries take on the characters 🙂 but those Finnish ones are hilarious :3
I’m partial to the Spanish covers, because they’re the ones I grew up with and still own. I also have an American edition of “Deathly Hallows” (with Mary GrandPré’s cover) and the first two books in the new UK Adult edition, whose covers I love, even if they’re simpler than others.
Of the covers I hadn’t seen before reading this post, I really like the new American and Swedish ones,
The very first Hungarian edition:http://ingyenkonyvek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/harry_potter_es_a_bolcsek_kove.jpg
The Dutch ones…I am Dutch and I don’t know…they just look awesome. I like the Russian ones as well, and the dramatic Danish ones..
Apart from those, I like the Japanese and German adult. And UK (adult and children) are worthy of mentioning, since they give me a little ‘Harry-potter-feeling’ for recognizing them from t.v.
Still…I have to stick to the Dutch ones, they give me the Harry Potter-feeling.
*I mentioned the words ‘Harry Potter feeling’ too often. I would like to change one into ‘Magical” 😀
i like the covers of all the uk and us non-adult versions. the adult versions are not bad either, just a bit boring. it bothers me that the american publisher changed the title of the first book though, i can’t forgive them. of the international versions, i like the japanese covers the most — it’s art; and the chinese covers the least — it’s crap. i’m chinese, so maybe i’m more sensitive to our own crap. i do feel slightly better to see some european versions to be not up to standard, like the french covers, it’s not as bad as the chinese ones but shouldn’t the french do better than that? or maybe it’s intentional since it’s english cultural invasion?
The French covers aren’t marketed at adults. They’re considered children’s or YA covers.
What county is the very last picture? The ones that are solid colors with the gold circle in the middle?
I’m curious too.
Stunning, right? Simple yet somehow give a mystic aura.
It is the Brazilian hard cover version. In Brazil we have four covers: both the American versions, the Bloomsbury’s white one and the hard cover.
It is in portuguese. They are pretty simple, but cool
I can’t find information on these anywhere. Do you know how or where they can be purchased?
As a finn, I grew up with those goofy looking Finnish Harry potter covers! I really loved them, and it was always so exciting to try to guess which character in the cover was supposed to be.
I find those original american covers quite boring, but those “adults-covers” with some stupid stock pictures even worse. But there’s lot of cool cover arts around the world!
Its so cool and interesting to discover how different à cover Can be according to the country it s published in.
I m french and even if those covers are special to me because of my childhood’s memories, i have to say that the drawing could have been so much better ! I always thought they could have taken someone who could draw à more accurate and magical covers … Like the new us édition. BUT of course … Covers for kids book have their own codes lol.
Finnish covers are Beyond words. I m amazed. Danish ones are awesome and russian’s are so game of throne style lol.