Another Day, Another Odd Literary Collectible for Sale: J. K. Rowlings Boots

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Blue Earth Benefit Auctions A pair of boots worn by J. K. Rowling while she wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone.

Finally, something for the J. K. Rowling fan who has everything, including some extra space in his or her shoe closet. Arriving on the heels, so to speak, of Tuesdays announcement that a one-sentence letter from J. D. Salinger to his maid was being offered for $50,000, a company in Omaha is putting up for auction a pair of boots that Ms. Rowling wore while she wrote the first book in her best-selling Harry Potter series. The boots, which are being sold by Blue Earth Benefit Auctions in an online auction that starts Friday at proxibid.com, were given to a fifth-grade class at Harrison Elementary School in Omaha in 1999. At that time, the class was conducting a project called Operation Shoe Tree, in which celebrities or other people the pupils admired were asked to write about their lives from the perspective of their footwear.

Ms. Rowling sent along the boots as well as a questionnaire (in her handwriting) in which they described themselves as extremely hard-working, having carried my owner all over Edinburgh in search of good cafes to write in. The boots went on to say, I happen to know that her black sandals have met Kirk Douglass shoes, Donny Osmonds shoes and Rosie ODonnells shoes. Naturally, I dont talk to them anymore. (The boots also recalled an incident from Ms. Rowlings teaching career when they were made fun of by a student who called them kinky.)

An auction Web site did not list an opening bid for the lot, which includes Ms. Rowlings questionnaire and a letter from her assistant (sent by owl post). The auction company said that proceeds from a 10 percent buyers premium would be donated to the Nebraska affiliate of Susan G. Komen For The Cure and Omaha Schools Foundation.

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