Despite a massive security operation, the final book of the Harry Potter series has been leaked online three days before its worldwide release.

Neil Blair, a lawyer for the author JK Rowling, confirmed today that some genuine material from the seventh Harry Potter book had been posted on the internet - but said that there was also much bogus content circulating.

It is the first time that material from any of the hugely successful boy wizard books has leaked onto the internet before publication. The book itself goes on sale in bookstores around the world on Friday at midnight, before when all copies are supposed to be closely guarded.

For the past two days, photographs of what are claimed to be pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows have appeared on a number of file-sharing websites.

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One set of images purports to show each of the 36 chapters - and a seven-page epilogue - from a 759-page version thought to be the American edition, published by Scholastic.

According to people who have read that version, several characters meet their end and others get married. Rowling herself has revealed only that two major characters die.

In one of the photos, still available on several sites, a hand is seen holding the book open at the bottom of each double-page spread as it is photographed above a patch of carpet.

Another, which purports to be the opening of Chapter 23, entitled 'Malfoy Manor', shows the first sentence as starting: "Harry looked around at the other two..."

A 33-year-old Canadian man who claims to have downloaded hundreds of the book's pages from one of the so-called 'Torrent' sites, told a Canadian news service : "What some guy did was take pictures of it, 500 little files, each with a picture of a page. Someone took the trouble to do that."

Today, a search for 'Harry Potter Hallows' on one of the largest so-called 'Torrent' sites, isoHunt, revealed 61 hits, many of which claimed to be the 'Full Book'.

In the past, several 'spoiler' attempts claim to have released plot details prior to a book's publication, but a manuscript itself has never been procured and posted online.

A spokeswoman for Bloomsbury, the book's UK publisher, would not confirm or deny today that the leaked version was the real thing, but said that "vast quantities" of material purporting to be the book were circulating.

"People are being very clever putting stuff online. There are many different versions and it's easy to use Photoshop [photo editing software] to make something look very real. We're asking people not to spoil the book for fans," she said. "We're getting phone calls from people in tears saying: 'I don't want to find out what happens.'"

A spokesman for Scholastic, the book's US publisher, said: "There's so much out there that is confusing for fans. Our lawyers are trying to keep down the amount of spoiler traffic and clear it from places where fans might be reading."

Harry Potter fan sites such as theleakycauldron.org, and mugglenet.com have vowed to keep spoiler material off their pages.

William Hill, the bookmaker, said today that it had stopped taking all bets on who would die in the book because it could no longer be sure punters had not already read the final chapters.

"Up until now the list of insiders was probably less than ten, but now that's obviously no longer the case," a spokesman for the firm said.

Meanwhile in internet forums, a war of words raged as to whether the version that had been posted was genuine.

"Yes its real, yes it works, yes its in a pdf. Have fun," one comment on thepiratebay.org read.

Another user wasn't so sure: "I'm going to have the burst the bubble on this being real. I was positive it was, until I found this on page 156: "Auntie Muriel, who seemed to be enjoying herself *hugely*, snapped her fingers for more champagne." To my knowledge, the word 'hugely' does not exist. Surely, a book as anticipated as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would have been edited multiple times."

"Hugely" is a rather common British expression," a rebuttal came back. "Nothing strange about it."

More than two million copies of the Deathly Hallows have been pre-ordered on Amazon, and the Royal Mail has said it expects to deliver 600,000 books on release day - about one for every 100 people in the UK.

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