LATEST: Online bookseller Amazon has revealed it was the buyer behind the purchase of J. K. ROWLING’s unique volume of fairytales - as a "thank you" for her contribution to literature.

The Tales of Beedle The Bard - first mentioned in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - is a hand-written and illustrated book of tales relating to the boy wizard’s final adventures.

Only seven copies of the book are in existence - six of them were handed out by Rowling as gifts to those "most closely connected" to the Potter series since its conception, with one put up for auction on Thursday (13Dec07) to help raise money for her Children’s Voice charity, raising $3.9 million (£1.95 million). Until now, the identity of the buyer has remained a secret.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, says, "Even before establishing her charity, J.K. Rowling had done the world a rare and immeasurably valuable service, enlarging forever our concept of the way books can touch people - and in particular children - in modern times." Damien Peachy, a company spokesperson, adds, "The company bought the book as a thank you for everything J.K. Rowling has done for literature, and for encouraging children to read and for parents to read with their children. We wanted to celebrate that." Amazon now hopes to find a way to convey the book’s five fairytales to a wider audience without infringing any of the copyright issues surrounding the unpublished work. Peachy adds, "We want to enable people to see it and to hear the fantastic stories, and one of the things we’re looking at is doing readings in schools."