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Truman Capote autographed a book to ... Harry Potter?

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The first edition of Truman Capote’s ‘The Thanksgiving Visitor’ is listed on the site of used-book seller AbeBooks for $1,000. The 1968 children’s book was signed by the author ... to Harry Potter.

‘For Harry Potter with gratitude,’ the inscription reads. ‘Truman Capote January 1978.’

Capote died just over 25 years ago, on Aug. 25, 1984. It would be six more years before Harry Potter was even a tickle in young J.K. Rowling’s mind, and the boy sorcerer wouldn’t see print until 1997. So wither the 1978 autograph?

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‘This Harry Potter was a physician in Bergen County, NJ,’ the seller, Brier Rose Books of Teaneck, NJ, explains in the listing. Not that the store isn’t welcoming the confusion. ‘Does J.K. Rowling know about this copy?’ they ask, hopefully.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

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