Harry Potter and the NH!

Where is the line between author and text? Greenblatt and Foucault have a hard time placing it. Is Nietzsche’s life relevant to his work? Are his later writings publishable, or do we need to establish a line that clearly marks the difference between his art versus his ramblings. Are all artifacts relevant for contributions for the text? Where is the line between biography, author interviews, and information relevant to the text? So many questions for you New Historicists!

While thinking about this, I took a look at a series we all know (except for Natalie) reasonably well: Harry Potter. In case you don’t know the premise, Harry Potter is a series of fantasy young adult books revolving around the seven years in which Harry Potter attends school for Wizards, makes friends, and defeats the very face of evil. Hurray!

However, an examination of J.K. Rowling’s life does add to the text. Rowling wrote the first few books in a café in Edinburgh that overlooks a street that looks like this.
Several scenes in the book/movie looks like this.
She used to also write in a pub that overlooked the Edinburgh Castle.
Here's Hogwarts.

In the book, the students have to pass their O.W.L.S. which has a similar name to actual standardized tests in England. However, more interesting are the historical and political connections Rowling’s knowledge of history and her own experiences draw. In an article from 2007, she noted that:

The expressions "pure-blood," "half-blood," and "Muggle-born" have been coined by people to whom these distinctions matter, and express their originators' prejudices. ... If you think this is far-fetched, look at some of the real charts the Nazis used to show what constituted "Aryan" or "Jewish" blood. I saw one in the Holocaust Museum in Washington when I had already devised the "pure-blood," "half-blood," and "Muggle-born" definitions and was chilled to see that the Nazi used precisely the same warped logic as the Death Eaters. A single Jewish grandparent "polluted" the blood, according to their propaganda (Goldstein).

She deliberately wrote in political and historical references within her fictional world, a fact that reflects how knowledge of historical events, like World War II contribute to a reading of the Harry Potter books. In this same article, however, Goldstein notes how Rowling, while outwardly goes against racism and negative attention to race, also contributes to a long held dialogue within the fantasy genre:

Like Tolkien, Rowling depicts a variety of magical species in addition to human wizards. Tolkien unabashedly racialized his magical beings; Tall, pale Elves spoke a beautiful Latinate tongue; little Hobbits were simple, fun-loving, loyal folk; and dark-skinned "southern" human tribes sided in battle with orcs, savage creatures no better than animals.
Rowling's world isn't all that different. A magical species called Veelas are high-born, fairy-like creatures who seduce men and possess unnatural, silvery-white beauty. Over the course of the books, the young wizards do learn to respect house elves, a species in slavery to human masters. Yet even in freedom, the elves' personalities are depicted as fundamentally servile. A rather pathetic elf named Kreacher feels his subordination so keenly that when he fails in tasks assigned to him by Harry, he beats himself to a pulp. We're meant to feel sorry for Kreacher, but elves have no agency -- they owe even their liberation movement to humans (Goldstein).

This reading, while different from the traditional New Historicist interpretation fits nicely with Cultural critics and Post Colonial, again showing the far reaching effects of this school of theory.
However a final question resides for me. It is appropriate to value Rowling’s ideas about her inspiration (Edinburgh), and even her own ideas about historical ties to her own piece. But Rowling also added tons of character information completely separate from the text, which to many people seemed to kill questions rather than spark interest. She gave us sexual orientation and psychology of characters. She wrote an epilogue that most people hated.
Where is the line between facts that contribute? Should we publish everything? Where is the line between crazy, helpful, and unnecessary?