BIOGRAPHY
SOURCE CITATION
"J(oanne) K. Rowling." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd
ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by Scholastic Inc.
BIOGRAPHICAL
ESSAY
J. K.
Rowling is a publishing phenomenon, a one-woman industry and the second richest
woman in the United Kingdom after the queen. Not
bad for a single mom who was once on welfare. The British author of novels for
young people caused an overnight sensation with her first book, Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer's Stone, which sold out of its first edition quickly and has
been reprinted many times. Even before publication, publishers in the United States were vying for rights
to the book, with top bidding going to Scholastic, which paid $100,000, the
most ever for a first novel by a children's book author. Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone rose to the top of the children's best-seller lists in 1998,
and was optioned by Warner Bros. for a movie. Its
sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, went to the top of the adult
best-seller lists in England shortly after its 1998
release, and consumer demand in the United States for the book brokered a
new era in Internet sales of books internationally, fueling
concern over publishing rights. Her subsequent titles in the series, Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkahan, Harry Potter and
the Goblet of Fire, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, added new
legions of fans to the Rowling fan club, with young readers around the world
lining up at bookstores dressed in Harry's glasses, eagerly awaiting each new
title. Translated into a multitude of languages around the world, the Harry
Potter books prove the theory of globalization better than most exports. The
Chinese publishing house, People's Literature, which once issued the poems of
Chairman Mao, even published a boxed set of the first three Harry Potter titles
in a print run of 600,000, the largest fiction printing since the communists
came to power in China in 1949. The release of
the Warner Bros. movie in late 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,
breached the last strongholds of benighted people in the world who had never
heard of Harry Potter. A box office hit, the movie secured the fame of both
Rowling and her youthful protagonist in the minds of people around the world.
With its three-day opening weekend, the movie broke all previous records,
earning a whopping $90 million in the United States. "Rowling's books
have bridged political and cultural chasms," wrote Paul Gray in Time
magazine, "they have altered publishing industries; they have even spurred
censorship moves by some religious fundamentalists." By the release of the
sixth Harry Potter Book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in 2004, more
than 100 million copies of the books were in print.
Rowling plans
to continue her Harry Potter saga for seven books, spinning a magical blend of
wit and fantasy--a surreal melange of "the dark juvenile novels of Roald Dahl and C. S. Lewis," according to Carla Power,
writing on the Harry Potter phenomenon in Newsweek. Rowling is good copy*mdash;a busy mom who wrote much of her first Harry Potter
adventure while sitting in coffeehouses as her little daughter napped beside
her, she presents a Cinderella story every bit as fanciful as the one she
concocted in her book. Rowling herself, winner of numerous awards and now
employed full-time in her life's ambition as a writer, has managed to keep a
semblance of private life, changing her old one-bedroom flat in Edinburgh for a
Scottish estate and various apartments, and marrying the day after Christmas in
2001. With an estimated annual income of over $40 million, she is no longer
worried about lining up for unemployment checks.
Born near Bristol, England, Rowling grew up with a
younger sister and a distinct inclination toward story-telling. Rabbits played
a large part in her early tales, for Rowling and her sister wanted a rabbit
very badly. Her first story, at age five or six, involved a rabbit dubbed,
quite logically, Rabbit, who got the measles and visited his friend, a giant
bee named Miss Bee. As Rowling commented, "Ever since Rabbit and Miss Bee,
I have wanted to be a writer, though I rarely told anyone so. I was afraid
they'd tell me I didn't have a hope."
Two moves took
the Rowling family eventually to the town of Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean along the border of England and Wales. This brought a
long-time country-living dream to fruition for Rowling's parents, both
Londoners, and the nine-year-old Rowling learned to love the countryside in
this new abode. She and her sister could wander unsupervised amid the fields
and play along the River Wye. "The only fly in the ointment was the fact
that I hated my new school," Rowling once noted. It was an old-fashioned
school with roll-top desks and a teacher who frightened Rowling.
From Tutshill Primary, Rowling went to Wyedean Comprehensive School. "I was quiet,
freckly, short-sighted and rubbish at sports,"
she commented of these years. Rowling confided to Roxanne Feldman in an
interview in School Library Journal that the character of Harry's friend
Hermione is loosely based on herself at age eleven.
English was her favorite subject and she created
serial stories for her friends at lunchtime, tales involving heroic deeds.
Contact lenses soon sorted out any feelings of inferiority in the young
Rowling; writing became more of a compulsion and less of a hobby in her teenage
years. Attending Exeter University, Rowling studied
French, something she later found to be a big mistake. Her parents had advised
her that bilingualism would lead to a successful career as a secretary.
"Unfortunately I am one of the most disorganized people in the
world," she related, which obviously posed a significant problem to a
budding secretary.
While working
at Amnesty International, Rowling discovered one thing to like about life as a
secretary: she could use the computer to type up her own stories during quiet
times. At age twenty-six, Rowling gave up her office job to teach English in Portugal. It was there that she
began yet another story that might become a book, about a boy who is sent off
to wizard school. All during the time she spent in Portugal, Rowling took notes on
this story and added bits and pieces to the life of her protagonist, Harry
Potter. In Portugal she also met the man
who became her husband, had a daughter, and got divorced.
Back in England, she decided to settle
in Edinburgh and set about raising her daughter
as a single mother. Accepting a job as a French teacher, she set herself a
goal: to finish her novel before her teaching job began. This was no easy task
with an active toddler in hand. Rowling confined her writing to her daughter's
nap time, much of it spent in coffeehouses where the understanding management
allowed her space for her papers. In her interview with Feldman, Rowling
commented that she had no idea what sort of reception the book would get, if
she was even able to get it published. "I knew how difficult it would be
just to get a book published. I was a completely unknown writer. I certainly
could never have expected what's happened. It's been a real shock." She
was able to send off her typed manuscript to two publishers before beginning
her teaching post, but it was not until several months later that the happy
news arrived that her long-time intimate, Harry Potter, would appear between
the covers of a book in England. And then a few months
later, the American rights were bought for a stupendous price and Rowling said
good-bye to teaching.
"Think
Luke Skywalker," opined an Associated Press writer in a profile of the
suddenly successful author which appeared in Hoosier Times. "Then add a
broom, a bunch of oddball buddies like the Goonies,
and an athletic contest where wizards great and small desperately try to fix
the outcome." This is only a rough approximation of the world to which
Rowling's first novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (published as
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in England) introduces the reader.
Harry Potter, an orphan,
has led a miserable life with the Dursley family, his
maternal aunt and uncle. Ever since Harry arrived unannounced at their
doorstep, the Dursleys have been put out, as has
their vile son, Dudley. Harry has taken up residence in a broom closet under
the stairs, bullied at school and mistreated by the Dursleys.
Small, skinny, and bespectacled, Harry is an unlikely hero. The only thing
physically interesting about Harry is the lightning-shaped scar on his
forehead.
"Harry had
a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair and bright green eyes," Rowling
wrote in the novel. "He wore round glasses held together with a lot of
Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him in the
nose." That quote goes a long way to demonstrating not only Rowling's
tongue-in-cheek humor, but also her sensitivity in
portraying the difficulties of being a child.
When Harry
turns eleven, he receives a letter. Of course the Dursleys
keep it from him, but finally another letter gets through to Harry telling him
that he has been admitted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This
is the first that Harry has known about his parents being wizards, or that they
were killed by the evil sorcerer, Voldemort, or that
he himself is something of a legend in wizard circles for having survived Voldemort's attack, which, by the way, left the scar on his
forehead. Before he knows what is happening, he is swept off by the giant Hagrid, keeper of the keys at the school, on a flying
motorcycle. Thus begins what Rayma Turton in Magpies called "a ripping yarn" and a
"school story with a twist." Instead of boring math and geography,
Harry takes lessons in the History of Magic and in Charms, or Defenses against the Dark Arts. He becomes something of a
star at the school athletic contest, quidditch, an
aerial sort of soccer match played on broomsticks. He forms friendships with
Ron and Hermione and encounters students not quite so pleasant, such as the sly
Draco Malfoy. He
investigates the secrets of the forbidden third floor at Hogwarts, battles evil
in the form of professor Snape whom Harry fears means
to steal the sorcerer's stone which promises eternal life, and discovers the
secret behind his scar. In short, Harry learns to be his own person.
"The
language is witty, the plotting tight, the imagination soars," Turton commented. "It's fun." A writer for the
Associated Press observed that "Rowling has an unerring sense of what it
means to be eleven, and her arresting, brick-by-brick construction of Harry's
world has turned a rather traditional plot into a delight." Hogwarts is a
composite of the typical English public school (which is actually private in America), yet turned on its
head. Harry is lodged in Gryffindor house, rivals of another house, Slytherin; his school supplies include a message-bearing
owl and a magic wand. "The light-hearted caper travels through the
territory owned by the late Roald Dahl," observed
a reviewer for Horn Book, who concluded that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone is a "charming and readable romp with a most sympathetic hero and
filled with delightful magic details." A Booklist commentator called the
book "brilliantly imagined and written," while a critic for
Publishers Weekly noted that there "is enchantment, suspense and danger
galore." A classic tale of good versus evil, as well as a coming-of-age
novel with a unique flavor, Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone is not simply a novel about magic and wizardry. As Michael Winerip commented in the New York Times Book Review,
"The magic in the book is not the real magic of the book." For Winerip, and countless other readers, it is the "human
scale" of the novel that makes it work. "Throughout most of the book,
the characters are impressively three-dimensional," Winerip
noted, concluding that Rowling "had wizardry inside," achieving
"something quite special" with her first novel.
Even as
enthusiastic reviews were pouring in from America, Rowling's second installment of the Harry Potter saga was published in England. Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets takes up where the first novel
stops. Harry returns to second term at Hogwarts in a flying car, and deals with
old and new characters alike. One of these newcomers is Nearly Headless Nick, a
poor creature upon whom an executioner made a messy cut; another is a ghost who
inhabits the girls' bathrooms, Moaning Myrtle. Valerie Bierman,
writing in Carousel, noted that "this plot is brilliantly scary with
horrible happenings, mysterious petrifyings and a
terrifying conclusion." A reviewer in Publishers Weekly asserted that, if
possible, the story is even more inventive than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone and Rowling's "ability to create such an engaging, imaginative,
funny and, above all, heartpoundingly suspenseful
yarn is nothing short of magical."
The third installment in the Potter series, Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban, begins when Harry is thirteen and starting his third year
at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and
Wizardry. A notorious mass murderer who is a henchman of the evil Lord Voldemort has escaped from Azkaban Prison and comes looking
for Harry. Despite the danger, Harry is quite preoccupied with an upcoming
match of quidditch where he plays the most important
position, that of the Seeker. Perhaps therein lies part of the secret to the
success of the Potter books, opined Gregory Maguire in New York Times Book
Review: "J. K. Rowling's fantasies celebrate a boy's relish in physical
prowess as well as the more bookish values of moral and intellectual
accomplishment." And even while the adventures are thrilling, a reviewer
in Publishers Weekly felt that they appear to be laying the groundwork for even
more breathless excitement. "The beauty here lies in the genius of
Rowling's plotting. Seemingly minor details established in books one and two
unfold to take on unforeseen significance, and the finale, while not airtight
in its internal logic, is utterly thrilling."
Harry Potter
and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban leapt
to number one on the adult best-seller lists in England, prompting a feeding
frenzy for them in America. But eager readers have
reason for solace as well. Rowling has sketched out plots for seven Harry
Potter novels in all, taking him through his years at Hogwarts, to age
seventeen and graduation. Maguire conjectured: "Maybe by then J. K.
Rowling will have achieved what people who love the best children's books have labored after: breaking the spell of adult condescension
that brands as merely cute, insignificant, second rate the heartiest and best
of children's literature."
Rowling's fame
and wealth continued to grow with the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of
Fire, in which fourteen-year-old Harry faces his biggest challenge to date,
battling evil Lord Voldemort to make friendship
triumphant over discord. At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, Harry's name is
picked out of the magic Goblet of Fire to compete in the Triwizard
Tournament. All the usual Rowling trademarks are in this fourth book, which was
so hyped that four million copies were sold even before its publication date.
Overall, skeptical critics felt that the author
delivered on all the hype. Rowling "is highly inventive, funny, a fine
plotter, and a superb narrator," wrote Brian Bethune in a Maclean's review of the fourth novel. "With Goblet,
" noted Kristen Baldwin of Entertainment Weekly, "the author gives
her characters complex new dimensions--even exploring the chamber of secrets
known as wizard puberty--without losing the whimsy that makes Potter fans long
to ditch the Muggle world for a cottage in Hogsmeade." Robert Papinchak
of People Weekly concluded, "Rowling squeezes in more than a few good laughs
as she moves toward the electrifying final confrontation. . . . Absolutely enchanting--the best of the series."
In addition to the
books, by 2001 the product merchandising of Harry Potter items accelerated as
the release of the first in a series of full length Harry Potter feature films
neared. The movie, starring Daniel Radcliffe as
Harry, quickly attained the popularity of the original novel. A film version of
the second novel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets premiered in London on November 3, 2002. On September 11, 2003, as Rowling's Harry
Potter books topped the American Library Association's list of most-challenged
books for 2002, Prince Felipe of Asturias presented her with Spain's Prince of Asturias
Concord Prize "for having helped children of all races and cultures to
discover the joy of reading." This honor carried
with it a $56,000 prize and a sculpture by Joan Miro.
The Harry
Potter books continued in succession, with a fifth release in the series
appearing to nearly one million advance orders in 2003. Called Harry Potter and
the Order of the Phoenix, the initial release of
the U.S. hard cover edition sold
five million copies in the first 24 hours, and a subsequent Scholastic edition
sold two million copies in 2004. Overall, the number of Harry Potter books in
print approached 100 million by the appearance of the sixth in the series,
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which saw publication in July 2004.
A Harry Potter
web site launched on May 24, 2004, coincidental with the
release of the film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, on June
4, 2004. The web site scored 17 million visitors in its first week. On June 5
Rowling won the Bram Stoker award for best work for young readers, for Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. On July 12, 2004 she received an honorary doctorate from Edinburgh University in Scotland. That same month, the
sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was scheduled
for publication.
With all her
works translated into thirty-five languages, and the subject of myriad
articles, Web pages, and even book-length biographies, J. K. Rowling has indeed
spawned a major book and film industry with her modest creation. "In one
sense," Gray wrote, "the boy wizard has slipped beyond her control;
he is out there, everywhere, and legions of people feel a sense of ownership.
But in the most important way, Harry still belongs to her. His future is in her
head, as is that of the entire fictional universe she has set in motion."
UPDATES
July 16, 2005: Rowling's Harry Potter
and the Half-Blood Prince sold 6.9 million copies in the United States in its first 24 hours
of sale, making it the fastest selling novel in history. The previous record of
5 million was set two years ago with the release of Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix. Source: New York
Times, www.nytimes.com, July 18, 2005.
November 18, 2005: Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire, a film based on Rowling's novel, opened November 18. The film
was written by Steve Kloves, directed by Mike Newell,
and released by Warner Brothers. Source: New York Times, www.nytimes.com, November 17, 2005.
February 2006: Rowling's fifth novel in the "Harry Potter" series,
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, has be
optioned for film. It will be directed by David Yates and released by Warner
Brothers. Source: CNN, www.cnn.com, February
2, 2006.
April 1, 2006: Rowling's Harry Potter
series won the Best Book award at the Kids' Choice Awards. Source: USA Today,
www.usatoday.com, April 2, 2006.
July 6, 2006: Rowling was awarded an
honorary Doctorate of Laws degree by Aberdeen University in Scotland. Source: USA Today,
www.usatoday.com, July 7, 2006. October 14, 2006: A movie adaption of
Rowling's novel Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, directed by Anand Tucker, is in production and opens in the United States on July 13, 2007. Source: Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com, February 15, 2007.
July 21, 2007: The seventh novel in
Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, will be published by Arthur A. Levine Books and available for sale on July 21, 2007. Source: Amazon, www.amazon.com, February 15, 2007.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born 1966, in Chipping Sodbury, England; married, 1992, and
divorced, 1993, (one child); married December
26, 2001 (two children). Education: Attended Exeter University. Addresses: Home--Edinburgh, Scotland. Agent--Christopher
Little Literary Agency, 10 Eel Brook Studios, 125
Moore Park Road, London SW6
4PS, England.
CAREER
Amnesty
International, secretary; teacher of English as a Foreign Language, Portugal; French teacher, Edinburgh, Scotland. Writer, 1996--.
http://www.edupaperback.org/showauth.cfm?authid=70
Other interesting biographies
: [Next] [1]
[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
[8]
[9] [10] [11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
Página creada y actualizada por
grupo "mmm".
Para cualquier
cambio, sugerencia, etc. contactar con: fores@uv.es
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
Universitat de Valčncia
Press
Página creada:
01/12/08 actualizada: 01/12/08