J.K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling, OBE (born 31 July 1965) is an English fiction writer who writes under the name of J. K. Rowling with the adopted middle name of Kathleen. Rowling is most famous as author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has gained international attention, won multiple awards and sold a reported 300 million copies worldwide as of 2005. In February 2004, Forbes magazine estimated her fortune as £576 million (just over US$1 billion), making her the first person to become a US dollar billionaire by writing books. Rowling is also believed to be the wealthiest woman in the United Kingdom, well ahead of even Queen Elizabeth II, but this is unproven as the Queen's personal fortune is hidden in 'The Bank of England Nominees' making her fortune known to only her closest officials.

Early life

J. K. Rowling was born in the General Hospital at Chipping Sodbury, near her parents' home in Yate, Gloucestershire, England in 1965. Together with her mother, father, and younger sister, Diana, she moved to Winterbourne, Bristol and then to Tutshill near Chepstow. She attended secondary school at Wyedean Comprehensive, where she told stories to her fellow students. In 1990, her 45-year-old mother succumbed to a decade-long battle with multiple sclerosis.

After studying French and Classics at Exeter University, with a year of study in Paris, she moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. During this period she had the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry while she was on a four-hour, delayed train trip between Manchester and London. When she had reached her destination, she already had the characters and a good part of the plot for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in her head; she began working on the story during her lunch hours.

Rowling then moved to Oporto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language. While there, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes on 16 October 1992. They had one child, Jessica Rowling Arantes (born 27 July 1993), before their divorce in 1995.

In December, 1994, she and her daughter moved to be near her sister in Edinburgh. Unemployed and living on state benefits, she completed her first novel, doing some of the work in an Edinburgh cafe — Nicolson's Cafe on Nicolsons Street (now a Chinese restaurant), owned by her brother-in-law (there is a widely circulated rumour that she wrote in a local café in order to escape from her unheated flat, but in a 2001 BBC interview Rowling remarked, "I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat, in Edinburgh, in mid-winter; it had heating."). Rowling spent a year studying for a PGCE in modern languages at Moray House (now part of the University of Edinburgh), graduating in 1996.

Harry Potter

Six of the seven volumes of the Harry Potter series, one for each of Harry's school years, have already been published and they have all been bestsellers.

Before publishing the first volume, Bloomsbury feared that the target group of young boys might be reluctant to buy books written by a female author. They requested that Rowling use two initials, rather than reveal her first name. As she had no middle name, she chose K from Kathleen, her grandmother's name, for her second initial. However, the name Kathleen has never been part of her legal name.

The book was an unexpectedly huge success. Combined with her earnings for the next three books, she became a billionaire. In 2001, she purchased a luxurious 19th-century mansion, Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay in Perthshire, Scotland, where she married her second husband, Dr. Neil Murray, on 26 December 2001. Rowling also owns an $11 million Georgian style house in London, with an underground swimming pool and 24-hour security.

The fifth book, titled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was delayed by an unsuccessful plagiarism suit directed towards her by rival author Nancy Stouffer (see below). Rowling took some time off from writing at this point, because during the process of writing the fifth book she felt her workload was too heavy. She said that at one point she had joked about breaking her arm to get out of writing, because the pressure on her was too much. After forcing her publishers to drop her deadline, she enjoyed three years of quiet writing, commenting that she spent some time working on something else that she might return to when she is finished with the Harry Potter series.

The Harry Potter books

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (June 26, 1997) (titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States)

• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (September 8, 1999)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (July 8, 2000)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (June 21, 2003)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 16, 2005)
• Unnamed seventh book
• Quidditch Through the Ages (2001)
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2001)

The last two purport to be facsimiles of books mentioned in the novels. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a textbook, while Quidditch Through the Ages is probably the most popular book in the Hogwarts library. They are complete with handwritten annotations and scribblings in the margins, and include introductions by Albus Dumbledore. All proceeds from them go to the UK Comic Relief charity. She has contributed money and support to many other charitable causes, especially research and treatment of multiple sclerosis, from which her mother died in 1990. This death heavily affected her writing, according to Rowling.

Harry Potter movies

A film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on November 16, 2001 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on November 15, 2002.

A darker atmosphere was adopted in the June 4, 2004 film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, attributed to the new director, Alfonso Cuarón. Rowling, who was a fan of Cuarón's work prior to the third film, has stated that the third film is her personal favourite.

November 18, 2005 marked the release of the fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was directed by yet a new director, Mike Newell.

Rowling resisted suggestions by the filmmakers that the movies should be filmed in the United States or cast with American actors (only one American appears in the first film). She only reluctantly agreed with changing Philosopher's Stone to Sorcerer's Stone and limited that change to the United States.

Rowling assists Steve Kloves in writing the scripts for the films, ensuring that his scripts do not contradict future books in the series. She says she has told him more about the later books than anybody else, but not everything. She has also said that she has told Alan Rickman and Robbie Coltrane certain secrets about their characters that are not yet revealed.

After Harry Potter

Harry Potter has made J.K. Rowling a well known and a very successful author, but after Rowling finishes the final Harry Potter book (the seventh, title unknown), she plans to continue writing, possibly using a pen name. In the same informative rare radio interview with a BBC journalist, Rowling stated she will most likely be aiming her new books at a younger audience.

J.K. Rowling Official Website