J. K.
Rowling – Biography
Biography of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. Info
and facts about the life of J. K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter books.
Joanne
Kathleen (Kathleen is her favorite Grandma's name and is not actually her
middle name) Rowling, brain behind the world famous "Harry Potter"
lived in Chipping Sodbury from an early age and was born on July 31st 1965.
From an early age all she ever wanted to do was write. She wrote her first book
when she was 6 years old, called Rabbit but never finished anything.
At present, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland with her daughter Jessica, now age
seven.
She moved twice while growing up. The first move was from Yate to Winterbourne,
just outside Bristol. In Winterbourne she was friends with a brother and sister
whose surname was Potter. She says she always liked the name, and preferred it
to her own because the children always made annoying jokes about rolling pins!
The second move was when she was nine years old. Her family moved to Tutshill
near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean. After attending Tutshill Primary School,
she went to Wyedean Comprehensive School.. She describes herself as having been
'quite freckly, short-sighted and rubbish at sports'. Her favorite subject was
English and foreign languages. At her school in Chepstow, Monmouthshire, she
passed all her exams and was made head-girl. Her parents wanted her to be
involved with foreign languages. She studied languages, more notably French,
and Classics at Exeter university and became a French teacher. She still
pursued her writing though in her spare time.
In 1990, at the age of 26, she moved to Portugal to teach English. She says
that she loved teaching English. She taught in the afternoons and evenings,
leaving the mornings free for writing. At this time she was starting work on
her third novel (the first two were never finished because she says they were
'very bad'). The new book was about a boy who found out he was a wizard and was
sent off to wizard school.
While in Portugal she met and married Portuguese journalist, Jorge Artantes.
Their daughter, Jessica, was born in 1993. After her marriage ended in divorce,
Rowling and her daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be close to her
younger sister, Di.
She began the first Harry Potter book in 1990, it was finished in 1995 and it
was finally published in 1997. Some publishing companies would not accept it
until Bloomsbury took her on. Before she tried to get the first book published
she mapped out the first seven books to get an idea of the events to come. J.K
Rowling has made around millions from the series and they are her only
published works.
The Scottish Arts Council gave her a grant to finish the book and, after a
number of rejections, she eventually sold Harry Potter and The Philosopher's
Stone $4,000 to Bloomsbury Publishing Company.
The book was published in the UK by Bloomsbury Children's Books in June 1997
(at the time of writing 1st editions of this book are on the market for upwards
of 12,000 UK pounds/ USA $20,000!). Thereafter the accolades began to pile up.
Harry Potter won The British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, and the
Smarties Prize.
In the USA, the title of the book was changed to Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone. The book was published in the USA in September 1998 by Arthur
A. Levine Books/Scholastic Press.
In 1997 she got her big break with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,
which won the 1997 Smarties Gold Award. It immediately topped the British and
American charts and J.K. Rowling earned enough money to quit teaching and write
full-time. She then had success with the second installment of Harry Potter, Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. This won the 1998 Smarties Gold Award.
The 3rd book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was also a huge
success for J.K. Rowling. The 4th book was released on July 8th 2000, and has
been one of the eagerly anticipated books of the year. Records have been broke
for the number of books printed and sold on the first day of release.
The sequel, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets was published in the UK in
July 1998 and in the USA in June 1999. The third book Harry Potter and The
Prisoner of Azkaban was published in the UK in July 1999 and in the USA in
September 1999.
By Summer 2000, the first three books had sold over 35 million copies in 45
languages and earned approximately $480 million.
In July 2000, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire had a first printing of
5.3 million copies with advance orders of over 1.8 million.
This book of course is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She is to produce 2
more books in the Harry Potter series, one for each of the years Harry has
remaining at Hogwarts. The fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the
Phoenix, was released on June 21st 2003 and was even more anticipated than
the last. Over 200 million copies have now been sold of all the books in over
200 countries and in 55 languages. There is no release day at the moment for
the sixth book.
Rowling was first writer to become billionaire. 2001
One joy of Rowling is not the originality of her ideas -- there are plenty of
other novels with boy wizards and boarding schools -- but what she does with
them. This is the story of an ethnic community in which everyone knows everyone
else and where enmities formed at school are still there years later. The adult
characters are every bit as interesting as the young protagonists and she
constantly reminds you that they, too, were once children. Apart from a few
over-the-top caricatures, such as the Dursleys, most of the characters, adult
and child alike, are three-dimensional. In this one, even Aunt Petunia is
presented more sympathetically than usual.
Another delight is that in the midst of Wizard World War II, there is normal
teen angst -- exams, friendships, the opposite sex (Harry gets his first kiss),
who's on the team, who's going out with whom.
She will be 39 years old this July and married Dr Neil Murray on Boxing Day
2001 at their home in Killiechassie House, Aberfeldy. Seven-bed roomed
Killiechasse House has an estimated value of £1.5 million, it's own library
(understandably) and a self-contained house in it's west wing. Jo also owns a
London property in trendy Kensignton. She has one younger sister, Di, who is
her biggest fan along with her daughter, Jessica, aged 10. She previously lived
with Jessica in Edinburgh, having first moved there in 1993. Jo and Neil
celebrated an addition to their family, when on March 23rd 2003, Jo gave birth
to David Gordon Rowling-Murray at an Edinburgh hospital.
JK Rowling reveals that Her favorite passage
from the books is the chapter on the Mirror of Erised in Philosopher's Stone
and the ending of Goblet of Fire is the part that she is most proud of. Her
favorite book though is Chamber of Secrets but she thought Prisoner of Azkaban
was the most fun to write.
Though the seeds of Harry had been sown as early as
1990, Rowling didn't put all of the pieces together and start writing in
earnest until the mid-1990s when she was living in Edinburgh, Scotland, raising
her daughter, Jessica, alone. Not able to afford even a used typewriter -- let
alone a computer -- Rowling wrote the earliest drafts of Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone in longhand. "I knew I wanted to get published. And, in
truth, writing novels is something you have to believe in to keep going. It's a
fairly thankless job when no one is paying you to do it. And you don't really
know if it's ever going to get into the bookshops so I really did believe in
it. But I was also very realistic. I knew the odds were not on my side because,
an unknown author, you know? It's tough. It's tough the first time to get
published, so I persevered. I loved writing it and I felt that I just had to
try."
The author has encouragement for others who would follow her path. "My
feeling is, if you really want to do it, you will do it. You will find the
time. And it might not be much time, but you'll make it. Obviously if you have
homework or other activities, you're not going to have huge amounts of time but
if you really want to, you'll do it."
About her own writing, Rowling says that, in some ways, she just writes what
she sees in her mind. "I have a very visual imagination. I see a situation
and then I try to describe it as vividly as I can. And I do love writing
dialog. Dialog comes to me as though I'm just overhearing a conversation."
Throughout the nearly incredible rise to popularity of the Harry Potter books,
Rowling has been asked if she was aware of being part of a crusade for reading
and literacy. She denies it, but not without some pride. "I wrote the book
for me. I never expected it to do this. That it's done it I think is wonderful.
If I can honestly think that I've created some readers then I feel I really
wasn't taking up space on this earth and I feel very, very, very proud. But I
didn't set out to do that and my first loyalty, as I say, is to the story as I
wanted to write it."
Published: 5/24/2004
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-23-2004-54566.asp
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