Women's History

J(oanne) K(athleen) Rowling

Born c. 1966
Writer

In J. K. Rowling's book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a young boy has been sent to live with abusive relatives after an apparent accident killed his parents. Harry Potter is unable to get anyone in his new household to tell him about his parents or what happened to them. Then Harry receives a letter in the mail from Hogwarts School, a premier institution of higher learning for witches and warlocks, inviting him to enroll. When Harry attends Hogwarts he learns that his parents — who were also magic-users — died at the hands of the dark wizard Lord Voldemort. Harry must soon confront Voldemort, who is threatening to steal the Philosopher's Stone — a stone that promises eternal life.

As the first book in the amazingly popular new Harry Potter series — with three record-breaking best-sellers to date and one coming out in July — Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone created a huge splash in the publishing world. The small advance of four thousand dollars Rowling received for the book in 1995 was the first drop in the bucket of money that her writing has earned. Harry Potter has proven to be so popular that the publishers are marketing the books both to children and to adults. The first three books have broken record after record as they hold their places at the top of best-selling book lists.

A Writer's Childhood

Rowling was born near Bristol, England, the daughter of middle-class parents. She started writing when she was very young, telling stories to her sister, Di, and finishing her first written story when she was six. Rowling's family moved frequently during her childhood, and she underwent the anxieties and insecurities common to many children. "I was quiet, freckly, short-sighted and rubbish at sports," she said in an interview with okukbooks.com.

Rowling attended Exeter University, where she studied French. After college she worked for Amnesty International researching human rights abuses in French-speaking Africa. While she was working in London, she thought up the idea for the Harry Potter books. "I was taking a long train journey from Manchester to London in England and the idea for Harry just fell into my head," Rowling said in an interview with her U.S. publisher, Scholastic. "At that point it was essentially the idea for a boy who didn't know he was a wizard, and the wizard school he ended up going to."

Rowling found that she was much more interested in writing than in her job. She wrote during her lunch breaks and during meetings; when it became obvious that she wasn't really attending to the job, she quit. She was twenty-six. In 1990, Rowling took off for Portugal to teach English as a Foreign Language. There, because she worked afternoons and evenings, she was able to write during the mornings. While she was in Portugal she married a journalist and gave birth to their daughter Jessica, but then divorced her husband. Rowling returned to the United Kingdom in 1994, settling in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her baby daughter and a "half a suitcase full of papers covered with stories about Harry Potter."

Finishing the Book

"Rowling found herself in the classic single-mother trap," explained a Time contributor. "She could not afford child care, so she could not go to work, and when she tried to put Jessica in state-funded care, she was told she was 'coping too well.' For almost a year, until she found teaching work, Rowling lived off public assistance. Every day, to escape her damp, unheated flat, she'd take the baby to the nearest cafe and write away, nursing a cup of coffee." Rowling received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council that made it possible for her to finish the book.

To Rowling's delight, her first Harry Potter book was accepted for publication in June 1997 by Bloomsbury Children's Books, under its British title Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. "Nothing since has matched the moment when I actually realized that 'Harry' was going to be published. That was the realization of my life's ambition — to be a published author — and the culmination of so much effort on my part," Rowling told Margaret Weir in a Salon interview. She had not expected the book to be so wildly successful, however — nor did anyone else.

Harry Potter was, from the beginning, planned as a seven-volume series. "I decided that it would take seven years, from the ages of 11 to 17, inclusive, to train as a wizard, and each of the books would deal with a year of Harry's life at Hogwarts," After Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone was published in 1997 (in 1998 as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States), Rowling followed with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 1998 and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 1999. A fourth volume, tentatively called Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament is scheduled for publication in July 2000. Warner Bros. has bought the film rights to the novels and the first in a series of live action films (Rowling does not want animation) is expected in 2001. Stephen Spielberg announced in February 2000 that after long deliberation, he had decided not to take this plum directing job. In his announcement he said: "I have every certainty that the series of 'Harry Potter' movies will be phenomenally successful. J. K. Rowling's vision of Harry Potter is modern genius."

Wild about Harry

Critical reception of the "Harry Potter" novels has been almost universally approving. Nearly everyone loves these books, and there is little precedent for the numbers they have sold. In early 2000, the first three novels had sold around 30 million copies throughout the world. They have been published in 115 countries and in 28 languages. And the awards have poured in. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was awarded the British Children's Book Award in 1998 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets won it in 1999, the first time any author won the award twice in a row. In February 2000, Rowling was awarded the prestigious Author of the Year award, right on the heels of having won the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award. Mattel has just won the contract from Warner Bros. for a Harry Potter doll, beating out five other companies for the deal.

"The world's just wild about Harry," said a San Francisco Chronicle article on the event of the publication of the third Potter novel. "He's atop local, national and international hardcover best-seller lists twice over: once for Rowling's first book about him, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and again for its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Improbably enough, these two titles appear on adult and children's best-seller lists alike."

One of the exceptions to the warm reception of the Potter books has occurred among some parents (particularly in South Carolina, Oregon, and Georgia) who oppose the subject of witchcraft and feel that the Potter books are not within the Christian tradition. There has also been controversy among publishers, who have questioned the placement of a children's book on the adult best-seller list of the New York Times.

When asked about her future, J. K. Rowling says she'll always be writing — but not the Harry Potter series forever. "I doubt I will ever again write anything as popular as the "Harry" books, but I can live with that thought quite easily. By the time I stop writing about Harry, I will have lived with him for 13 years, and I know it's going to feel like a bereavement."

January 2001: Rowling won the W. H. Smith Children's Book of the Year Award for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Additionally, Rowling announced on January 8 that she plans to publish two Harry Potter specials on March 12, 2001. The new tales are titled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages. Eleven million volumes are to be published, and a portion of the revenue on each book sold will be donated to a British charity called Comic Relief. This group gives aid to children in developing countries.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR

  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Bloomsbury (London), 1997, published as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books (New York City), 1998.
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Bloomsbury, 1998, Scholastic, 1999.
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Bloomsbury, 1999.
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Bloomsbury, 2000, Scholastic, 2000.
  • (Under name Newt Scamander) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, special edition with a foreward by Albus Dumbledore, Arthur A. Levine Books (New York), 2001.
  • (Under name Kennilworthy Whisp) Quidditch Through the Ages, Arthur A. Levine Books, 2001.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Bloomsbury, 2003.

AWARDS

  • British Book Award, Children's Book of the Year, and Rowntree Nestle Smarties Prize, both 1997, both for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
  • British Book Award, Children's Book of the Year and Rowntree Nestle Smarties Prize, both 1998, both for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
  • W. H. Smith Children's Book of the Year Award for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2001.

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Web Sites

Entertainment Full Coverage: Harry Potter.

Salon Interview with J. K. Rowling.

Periodicals

Books for Keeps, September, 1997, p. 27.

Guardian, Debruary 16, 1999, p. EG4.

New Statesman, December 5, 1997, p. 64.

Publishers Weekly, December 21, 1998, p. 28; January 4, 1999, p. 30; January 11, 1999, p. 24; February 15, 1999, p. 33.

School Librarian, August, 1997, p. 147.

Time, April 12, 1999, p. 86.

USA Today, October, 1998.

 

Source: Contemporary Authors Online. Gale, 1999.
Site updated 2003.

http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/whm/bio/rowling_jk.htm

 

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