An Illustrated Look At Some Of Literature's Near Brushes With Death

An Illustrated Look At Some Of Literature’s Near Brushes With Death

Last week, JK Rowling announced that, midway through writing the Harry Potter series, she nearly killed off Ron Weasley “out of spite.” Ron isn’t the first supporting character to narrowly avoid death in an author’s rough draft. Here we look at some other close calls — and how those deaths would have affected the culture at large.

Jon Methven is the author of This Is Your Captain Speaking, due out in 2012 by Simon & Schuster. He can be reached here, or follow him on Twitter @jonmethven.