Rowling pens 'unofficial' Potter farewell

J.K. Rowling will release her latest book The Tales Of Beedle The Bard on Thursday.

The book is a collection of five fairy tales which was mentioned in the final Potter book Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows.

"The Tales Of Beedle The Bard is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I loved and lived in for 17 years," Rowling wrote in the sale catalogue for an auctioned copy.

One of the five stories, 'The Tale Of The Three Brothers', refers to certain clues that were crucial to Potter's final mission to destroy Lord Voldermort.

Profits from the sale of the book will be donated to The Children’s High Level Group, a charity for vulnerable children in Eastern Europe.

The Harry Potter novels have so far sold more than 400 million copies and have been translated into 67 languages.