Rowling 'lacks writing skills'

Cambridge-educated A S Byatt said adults who read Miss Rowling's books about Harry Potter are people of 'little imagination' immersed in a world of soap operas and reality TV shows.

In an article about Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix in the New York Times, Miss Byatt said the books spoke to a generation that had 'not known or cared about mystery'.

'It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to

TV cartoons and the exaggerated - more exciting, less threatening - mirror world of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip,' she said.

'They are the inhabitants of urban jungles, not the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing.'

People's devotion to the books had little to do with the 'shiver of awe we feel' looking through ' magical casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn' of the poet Keats.

The author of Possession and Angels And Insects, whose favourite writers are Marcel Proust and Balzac, added that the books lacked the 'compensating seriousness' of writers such as Tolkien, Susan Cropper and Alan Garner.

She said Miss Rowling's world was small with 'no place for the numinous (awe-inspiring)', in contrast to writers such as Terry Pratchett, who she praised for composing 'amazing sentences'.

Her comments came after bestselling American horror writer Stephen King raved about Miss Rowling's latest book.

He described her as a 'natural storyteller bursting with crazily vivid ideas and having the time of her life'.

Literary critics responded to Miss Byatt's attack by accusing her of being a snob. Charles Taylor, book critic for the American literary web site Salon, said it was 'churlish' to put Miss Rowling's success in selling 5million books a day down to the stupidity of the masses.

He accused the Booker winner of being jealous of others' success, adding that Miss Byatt had had a 'hissy fit' when author Martin Amis was given a lucrative advance against future books.

Mr Taylor said that when Miss Byatt was reduced to a footnote in academic history, the Potter author would be 'laughing'.

Miss Byatt last night declined to respond to the criticisms. A spokesman for Miss Rowling said she was unavailable for comment.