The influences behind Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

1997

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J. K. Rowling

Late 20th century. Britain. Written in English.

An orphan raised by cruel relatives learns at eleven that he is a wizard and enters Hogwarts, a boarding school for magic, where he and two friends uncover a plot to steal an alchemical stone that grants immortality. It joins the British boarding-school story to the English children's fantasy tradition and sets the plot up as a clue-planted mystery.

Where it came from

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1950

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

C. S. Lewis

Mid-20th century. England. Written in English.

Four children evacuated from London pass through a wardrobe into Narnia, where the lion Aslan dies and rises again to break the White Witch's winter.

What it handed down

To Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Rowling has said she loved the Narnia books as a child. Like the wardrobe, the barrier at King's Cross is a hidden doorway from wartime or suburban drabness into a magical world where a child has a destined part in the struggle against an evil power.

Where it came from

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1946

The Little White Horse

Elizabeth Goudge

Mid-20th century. England. Written in English.

Novel about the orphan Maria Merryweather, who comes to live at Moonacre Manor and works to break an old feud tied to a moon princess and a white unicorn. Known for detailed descriptions of food, rooms and animals.

What it handed down

To Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Rowling named The Little White Horse as a favourite childhood book and said it perhaps had more direct influence on Harry Potter than any other, because Goudge always told readers what her characters were eating. The Hogwarts feasts and detailed rooms follow that habit, and both books begin with an orphan arriving at an old enchanted house.

Where it came from

The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald 1872 follow this thread

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1906

The Story of the Amulet

E. Nesbit

Edwardian. England. Written in English.

Third book about five London children and the wish-granting Psammead, who travel through time to ancient Egypt, Babylon and Atlantis in search of the missing half of a magic amulet.

What it handed down

To Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

Stylistic influence, probable.

Rowling has said she identifies with E. Nesbit more than with any other writer. The Psammead books gave her a model of magic intruding on an ordinary household, told with brisk comic narration that plays the children's practicality against wonder.

To The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

Thematic kinship, probable.

In Surprised by Joy Lewis singled out Nesbit's trilogy, especially The Amulet, as a childhood favourite that taught him about the past. Narnia opens, as Nesbit's books do, with ordinary siblings in a London-era household who stumble into magic.

Where it came from

Vice Versa, F. Anstey 1882 follow this thread
One Thousand and One Nights, Anonymous c. 9th century (earliest fragment) follow this thread

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1882

Vice Versa

F. Anstey

Victorian. England. Written in English.

Comic novel in which a magic stone makes a businessman and his schoolboy son swap bodies, sending the father to his son's boarding school. It placed magic inside an ordinary middle-class household.

What it handed down

To The Story of the Amulet (1906)

Stylistic influence, probable.

Anstey showed how a single magic object could cause comic havoc in a respectable modern household, played for social comedy rather than wonder. Critics of Nesbit, including her biographer Julia Briggs, name Anstey among the writers whose domestic-magic comedy she took up in the Psammead books.

Where it came from

Tom Brown's School Days, Thomas Hughes 1857 follow this thread

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1872

The Princess and the Goblin

George MacDonald

Victorian. Scotland/England. Written in English.

Fairy tale in which Princess Irene, guided by a mysterious great-great-grandmother who spins thread from moonlight, and the miner boy Curdie defeat goblins under the mountain.

What it handed down

To The Little White Horse (1946)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Both books centre on a girl heroine in an old house haunted by moon imagery and guided by a protective older woman. Readers have linked Goudge's Moon Princess to MacDonald's moonlight-spinning grandmother, but Goudge did not record such a debt.

Where it came from

Phantastes, George MacDonald 1858 follow this thread

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1858

Phantastes

George MacDonald

Victorian. Scotland/England. Written in English.

A 'faerie romance for men and women' in which a young man, Anodos, wanders through Fairy Land meeting tree spirits, knights and his own shadow.

What it handed down

To The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Lewis wrote that buying Phantastes at a railway bookstall in 1916 'baptised' his imagination, and he later called MacDonald his master. Lewis's Narnia, like MacDonald's Fairy Land, is a holy otherworld that a reader enters from an ordinary room.

To The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

MacDonald carried the Christian fairy-land vision of his adult romance into his children's books. The wise woman in the tower and the testing of faith in unseen guidance continue themes he first worked out in Phantastes.

Where it came from

Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Novalis 1802 follow this thread
The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser 1590 (Books I-III) follow this thread

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1857

Tom Brown's School Days

Thomas Hughes

Victorian. England. Written in English.

Novel of a boy's years at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold, covering house loyalty, sport, bullying and moral growth. It fixed the conventions of the boarding-school story.

What it handed down

To Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

Structural model, probable.

Rowling's novel follows the boarding-school pattern Hughes set: arrival by train, sorting into houses with fierce loyalty, a house competition, a bullying rival in the Flashman mould, and a sport (rugby there, Quidditch here) that carries the climaxes of the school year. The newcomer befriended by a bold boy and steadied by a more scrupulous one recurs in Harry, Ron and Hermione.

To Vice Versa (1882)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Anstey sends his body-swapped father into Dr Grimstone's boarding school, a comic version of the world Hughes had idealised. The fagging, fights and masters' tyranny are the school-story conventions turned to farce.

Where it came from

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1844

The Snow Queen

Hans Christian Andersen

Danish Golden Age. Denmark. Written in Danish.

Fairy tale in which the boy Kay, his heart chilled by a splinter of a troll mirror, is carried off by the Snow Queen's sledge and rescued by his friend Gerda.

What it handed down

To The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

Direct source, probable.

The White Witch, who rides a sledge, keeps her land in winter and wins over the boy Edmund with sweets until his heart turns cold, closely parallels Andersen's Snow Queen and her captive Kay. Critics regularly cite the tale as a source.

Where it came from

The line stops here: andersen's sources are Danish folklore and his own invention.

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1815

Emma

Jane Austen

Regency. England. Written in English.

Novel of a confident young woman who meddles in her neighbours' romances and misreads nearly all of them. The true situation is hidden in plain sight until the end.

What it handed down

To Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

Structural model, probable.

Rowling has said she has read Emma at least twenty times and admires how Austen hides the truth in plain sight. The Philosopher's Stone works the same way: clues to Quirrell's guilt sit in the narrative while Harry, like Emma, misreads the obvious suspect, Snape.

Where it came from

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1802

Heinrich von Ofterdingen

Novalis

German Romanticism. Germany. Written in German.

Unfinished novel about a medieval poet's quest for the blue flower, mixing dream, embedded fairy tale and allegory. Published after Novalis's death.

What it handed down

To Phantastes (1858)

Direct source, well documented.

MacDonald opens Phantastes with an epigraph from Novalis on the nature of the fairy tale and quotes Novalis again in his chapter headings. The dreamlike wandering through a symbolic landscape follows Novalis's romance and its embedded tales.

Where it came from

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1795-96 follow this thread

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1796

Camilla

Frances Burney

Georgian. England. Written in English.

Novel of a young woman's courtship troubles, driven by misunderstandings among a large family circle.

What it handed down

To Emma (1815)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Austen subscribed to Camilla and praised it by name in Northanger Abbey. Burney's comedy of a heroine misled by misunderstandings in a family circle anticipates Emma's errors of judgement.

Where it came from

The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Samuel Richardson 1753 follow this thread

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1795-96

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Weimar Classicism. Germany. Written in German.

Novel of a merchant's son who tries the theatre and finds his way to maturity under a secret society. The model for the German novel of education.

What it handed down

To Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Novalis admired Wilhelm Meister at first, then came to reject its prosaic ending. He planned Heinrich von Ofterdingen as a poetic counter-novel of education in which the hero becomes a poet rather than a practical man.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch, followed here only as the book Novalis set out to answer.

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1753

The History of Sir Charles Grandison

Samuel Richardson

Georgian. England. Written in English.

Epistolary novel about a virtuous gentleman and the circle of families around him, built on close observation of everyday social life.

What it handed down

To Emma (1815)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Henry Austen recorded that Grandison was his sister's favourite novel, and she adapted it as a short play for family performance. Its close attention to the conversation and manners of a small social circle is a model for the village world of Emma.

To Camilla (1796)

Stylistic influence, probable.

Burney admired Richardson, and her novels continue his concern with a young woman's moral conduct under social pressure. She moved from his letter form to third-person narration but kept his detailed domestic scenes.

Where it came from

The line stops here: richardson's sources are conduct books and his own letter-writing manual, not a literary model.

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1749

The Governess, or The Little Female Academy

Sarah Fielding

Georgian. England. Written in English.

Short book about nine girls at a small boarding school who tell stories and learn to govern their quarrels. Usually called the first English school story for children.

What it handed down

To Tom Brown's School Days (1857)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Fielding's book began the English school story, with a small closed community of pupils whose quarrels and reforms make up the plot. Historians of children's literature place Hughes in that line, though there is no record that he read Fielding.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch; its models are educational tracts and moral fables rather than a single literary source.

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1590 (Books I-III)

The Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser

Elizabethan. England. Written in English.

Allegorical romance epic in which knights representing the virtues undertake quests in Faerieland, written in the nine-line Spenserian stanza.

What it handed down

To Phantastes (1858)

Structural model, probable.

Anodos's journey through Fairy Land as a series of allegorical encounters with knights, false beauties and temptations follows Spenser's method. The deceiving Alder-maiden has been compared to Spenser's Duessa, and MacDonald was a close reader of the poem.

Where it came from

Orlando Furioso, Ludovico Ariosto 1516 follow this thread
Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread
Le Morte d'Arthur, Thomas Malory 1485 follow this thread

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1516

Orlando Furioso

Ludovico Ariosto

Italian Renaissance. Ferrara, Italy. Written in Italian.

Romance epic of Charlemagne's knights at war with the Saracens, weaving many interlaced quests, enchantresses, hippogriffs and Orlando's madness for love.

What it handed down

To The Faerie Queene (1590 (Books I-III))

Direct source, well documented.

Gabriel Harvey's correspondence records Spenser's aim to 'overgo' Ariosto. The interlaced quests, enchantresses and episodes translated or adapted from the Furioso, such as Acrasia's bower drawing on Alcina's isle, are direct borrowings.

Where it came from

Orlando Innamorato, Matteo Maria Boiardo 1483 follow this thread
Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread

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1485

Le Morte d'Arthur

Thomas Malory

Late Medieval England. England. Written in English.

Prose compilation of Arthurian legend from Arthur's birth to the fall of the Round Table, printed by Caxton.

What it handed down

To The Faerie Queene (1590 (Books I-III))

Thematic kinship, probable.

Spenser makes Prince Arthur the linking hero of his poem and draws on the Arthurian world Malory's printed book had made familiar in England. Knights wandering a forest of adventures recall Malory's quests.

Where it came from

The Vulgate Cycle (Lancelot-Grail), Anonymous c. 1215-1235 follow this thread

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1483

Orlando Innamorato

Matteo Maria Boiardo

Italian Renaissance. Ferrara, Italy. Written in Italian.

Unfinished romance epic that makes Charlemagne's paladin Roland a lover and fills the Carolingian matter with Arthurian magic.

What it handed down

To Orlando Furioso (1516)

Direct source, well documented.

Ariosto wrote the Furioso as a continuation of Boiardo's unfinished poem. He picked up its characters, including Orlando, Angelica and Ruggiero, at the point where Boiardo had left them.

Where it came from

The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland), Anonymous c. 1100 follow this thread

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c. 1215-1235

The Vulgate Cycle (Lancelot-Grail)

Anonymous

High Middle Ages. France. Written in Old French.

Huge prose cycle of Arthurian romance covering Lancelot, the Grail quest and the death of Arthur.

What it handed down

To Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)

Direct source, well documented.

Malory's colophons and his repeated phrase 'as the French book saith' acknowledge his sources. Large parts of the Morte, including the Lancelot sections, the Grail quest and the death of Arthur, are condensed translations of the Vulgate prose romances.

Where it came from

Perceval, the Story of the Grail, Chrétien de Troyes c. 1190 follow this thread

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c. 1190

Perceval, the Story of the Grail

Chrétien de Troyes

High Middle Ages. France. Written in Old French.

Unfinished verse romance about a naive young knight who visits the Fisher King's castle and fails to ask about the Grail.

What it handed down

To The Vulgate Cycle (Lancelot-Grail) (c. 1215-1235)

Direct source, well documented.

The Vulgate's Grail quest grows out of the story Chrétien left unfinished in Perceval, recast in prose and given a Christian meaning with Galahad as the Grail knight.

Where it came from

The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), Geoffrey of Monmouth c. 1136 follow this thread

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c. 1136

The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Anglo-Norman. England. Written in Latin.

Legendary chronicle of British kings that gave Arthur and Merlin their first full literary treatment.

What it handed down

To Perceval, the Story of the Grail (c. 1190)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Geoffrey's chronicle, chiefly through Wace's French adaptation, gave Chrétien's generation the court of Arthur as a fixed setting. Chrétien set his invented knightly adventures against that background.

Where it came from

The line stops here: draws on Welsh legend, Nennius and invention; branch stopped here.

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c. 1100

The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland)

Anonymous

High Middle Ages. France. Written in Old French.

Epic of Roland's last stand at Roncevaux against a Saracen army, the founding poem of the Carolingian cycle.

What it handed down

To Orlando Innamorato (1483)

Direct source, probable.

Boiardo's paladins, Charlemagne's court and the war against the Saracens come from the Carolingian matter founded by the Roland poems, which reached Italy through Franco-Italian versions. Boiardo then fused this material with Arthurian love and magic.

Where it came from

The line stops here: grows from oral chanson de geste tradition with no documented literary source.

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c. 9th century (earliest fragment)

One Thousand and One Nights

Anonymous

Abbasid. Iraq and the Arabic-speaking Near East. Written in Arabic.

Collection of tales framed by Scheherazade's nightly storytelling, full of djinn, wishes, flying carpets and magic lamps. Known in Europe through Galland's French version and many English translations.

What it handed down

To The Story of the Amulet (1906)

Thematic kinship, probable.

The wish-granting Psammead plays the part of the djinn of the Nights, and the companion book The Phoenix and the Carpet takes its flying carpet from the same source. In The Story of the Amulet the children's trips to Babylon and the ancient East draw on the oriental settings Victorian readers knew from English versions of the Nights.

Where it came from

Kalila and Dimna (Kalila wa Dimna), Ibn al-Muqaffa c. 750 follow this thread

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c. 750

Kalila and Dimna (Kalila wa Dimna)

Ibn al-Muqaffa

Early Abbasid. Iraq. Written in Arabic.

Arabic version, made from a Middle Persian translation, of the Indian Panchatantra, presenting animal fables inside a frame of advice to a king. It became one of the most widely translated books of the medieval world.

What it handed down

To One Thousand and One Nights (c. 9th century (earliest fragment))

Structural model, probable.

Ibn al-Muqaffa's Arabic Kalila and Dimna brought the Indian nested-fable frame into Arabic prose. The Nights uses the same device of a storyteller whose tales contain further tales, told to influence a king.

Where it came from

Panchatantra, Vishnu Sharma (attributed) c. 300 follow this thread

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c. 300

Panchatantra

Vishnu Sharma (attributed)

Classical India. India. Written in Sanskrit.

Collection of animal fables nested inside one another and framed as lessons in statecraft for three princes. Its box-within-box design passed west through Persian and Arabic translations.

What it handed down

To Kalila and Dimna (Kalila wa Dimna) (c. 750)

Direct source, well documented.

Kalila and Dimna is a translation, through a lost Middle Persian version, of the Panchatantra. Its jackal narrators and its frame of advice to a king come straight from the Sanskrit original.

Where it came from

Mahabharata, Vyasa (traditional) c. 400 BCE (core) follow this thread

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c. 70 (Mark)

The Gospels (New Testament)

Anonymous (attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, John)

Early Roman Empire. Roman Palestine and eastern Mediterranean. Written in Koine Greek.

Four accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, centred on a sacrificial death for others.

What it handed down

To The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

Direct source, well documented.

Aslan's surrender to the Witch in place of the traitor Edmund, his mocking and killing on the Stone Table and his return at dawn retell the Passion and Resurrection. Lewis described Narnia as imagining how Christ might appear in another world.

To Tom Brown's School Days (1857)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Hughes wrote as a Christian Socialist, and the Gospel ethic of sacrifice and courage drives the book's moral turn. The scene where the frail George Arthur kneels to pray in a dormitory of jeering boys, and Tom then defends him, is built on New Testament teaching.

Where it came from

The Septuagint, Anonymous c. 250 BCE (Torah) follow this thread

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19 BCE

Aeneid

Virgil

Augustan Rome. Augustan Rome. Written in Latin.

Epic of the Trojan Aeneas's wanderings and his war in Italy, written as Rome's founding poem.

What it handed down

To The Faerie Queene (1590 (Books I-III))

Structural model, probable.

Spenser shaped his career on Virgil's, moving from pastoral in The Shepheardes Calender to national epic. He presented The Faerie Queene as a Virgilian poem that glorifies a dynasty through its legendary origins.

To Orlando Furioso (1516)

Structural model, well documented.

Ariosto ends his poem with Ruggiero killing Rodomonte in single combat, modelled on the close of the Aeneid where Aeneas kills Turnus. Virgilian similes and the founding of the Este dynasty through Ruggiero follow Virgil's dynastic design.

Where it came from

Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread
Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread

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c. 250 BCE (Torah)

The Septuagint

Anonymous

Hellenistic. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Written in Koine Greek.

Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures made for the Jewish community of Alexandria.

What it handed down

To The Gospels (New Testament) (c. 70 (Mark))

Direct source, well documented.

The Gospel writers quote the Hebrew scriptures mostly in the Greek of the Septuagint. Their accounts of Jesus are framed as fulfilment of those quoted prophecies.

Where it came from

The Hebrew Bible, Anonymous c. 500 BCE (major compilation) follow this thread

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c. 400 BCE (core)

Mahabharata

Vyasa (traditional)

Vedic to Classical India. India. Written in Sanskrit.

Epic of the war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, told through layers of narrators and full of embedded stories and teaching episodes.

What it handed down

To Panchatantra (c. 300)

Structural model, probable.

The Mahabharata established in Sanskrit the method of embedding teaching stories inside a larger narrative, and several of its fables reappear in the Panchatantra. The Panchatantra's purpose of teaching statecraft through stories also echoes the epic's didactic sections.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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c. 500 BCE (major compilation)

The Hebrew Bible

Anonymous

Iron Age to Persian period. Judah and Babylonian exile. Written in Hebrew.

Scriptures of ancient Israel, including the Torah, prophets such as Isaiah with its suffering servant, and wisdom writings.

What it handed down

To The Septuagint (c. 250 BCE (Torah))

Direct source, well documented.

The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, beginning with the Torah, made for Alexandrian Jews who no longer read Hebrew.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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c. 725 BCE

Odyssey

Homer

Archaic Greece. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

Epic of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home from Troy among monsters and enchantresses.

What it handed down

To Aeneid (19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The first six books follow the Odyssey: a storm-tossed hero tells his past at a foreign court, meets monsters such as the Cyclops and descends to the underworld.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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c. 750 BCE

Iliad

Homer

Archaic Greece. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

Epic of Achilles' wrath during the Trojan War, ending with the burial of Hector.

What it handed down

To Aeneid (19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The second half of the Aeneid restages the Iliad in Italy, with Turnus as a new Achilles and battle scenes, catalogues and funeral games modelled on Homer's.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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