Chronology

Chronology

Early 1960s Father, Peter, a chartered engineer for Rolls Royce in Bristol, England, meets mother, Anne, a half-French, half-Scottish lab technician, on a train from KING'S CROSS station in London. He proposes to her on another train.

July 1965 Joanne Kathleen Rowling is born at Chipping Sodbury General Hospital in Gloucestershire.

1971 Rowling, age six, writes first story, about a rabbit who gets the measles. The family moves from Yate to Winterbourne, near Bristol, where Rowling, nine, and her younger sister, Di, play with a gang of children in their street, including a brother and sister named POTTER.

Ian Potter plays lots of tricks--hides SLUGS on picnic plates and booby-traps the training wheels on sister Vikki Potter's bike. He even gets Jo, Di and Vikki to run through wet concrete. The girls love dressing up as WITCHES. [Ian is now a damp-proofing technician in Yate. Vikki is now a software-company sales director.]

1974 Family moves to Tutshill, near Chepstow in Wales. Rowling hates new school, but adores reading E. Nesbit, Noel Streatfield, Paul Gallico's Manxmouse, C.S. Lewis' Narnia series and Elizabeth Goudge's Little White Horse. Writes her own story about seven cursed diamonds.

1976 Starts at Wyedean Comprehensive, not a private school, although nearby Wyedean School has Houses named Armstrong, Bannister, Chichester and Hillary. Her best and oldest "foulweather friend" is Sean Harris (the basis for RON WEASLEY).

Tells friends long stories during lunch breaks. Later describes self at this time as a pudding-faced child with glasses (the basis for HERMIONE) "a snotty, swotty little kid" and very insecure until she gets contact lenses. Becomes a big fan of Jane Austen.

1980 Mother diagnosed with multiple sclerosis

1982 Rowling becomes Head Girl, or lead pupil, at Wyedean Comprehensive

1983 Goes to University of Exeter to study French and classics. Starts collecting odd names in earnest.

1985 Spends one year in Paris as teaching assistant as part of degree.

1987 Graduates, then works briefly as a research assistant for Amnesty International and shares a flat in Clapham, South London. Writes during lunch hours in pubs and cafes. At least two novels for adults are conceived at this time.

1988 Secretarial work in Manchester, but hates it. Uses time to type stories on computer

1990 On a train journey from Manchester to KING'S CROSS in London, Harry Potter the character strides "fully formed" into her head, and she starts to create the whole world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry around him. Unfortunately, she has no pen or paper, so she commits it all to memory.

1990 Mother dies at age 45 from multiple sclerosis.

1991 Rowling, 26, goes off to teach English as a foreign language in Oporto, Portugal. Writes ten different first chapters for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Invents names of Hogwarts Houses on the back of an airsickness bag.

1992 Marries Portuguese television journalist.

1993 Gives birth to daughter, Jessica, named after Rowling's idol, author and activist Jessica Mitford. Christmas 1993: Divorces; returns to Britain with baby Jessica; heads for Edinburgh, Scotland, where sister Di lives, carrying half a suitcase of Harry Potter stories. Di, who used to be a nurse, is studying law. One month after her return, British Prime Minister John Major makes a speech about single mothers being at the root of society's ills.

1994 Tells Di the story of Harry Potter. Fortunately, Di loves it. Rowling is living in one-bedroom flat, can't get a place in state-sponsored day care for Jessica, and can't afford private child care without a job. Experiences brief period of severe depression (inspiring the DEMENTORS who suck happy memories from mortals and drive them to despair). Gets by on income support of £69 ($105) per week. Writes Harry Potter on notepads in cafes around Edinburgh, fueled by the occasional espresso while Jessica naps in her buggy. Continues scribbling in evenings. "I really wrote it entirely for myself."

1995 Finishes writing book and types manuscript on old £40 ($63) typewriter. Can't afford to photocopy the manuscript, so types it out all over again. Goes to library and looks up the names of agents and publishers. Sends manuscript to two agents and one publisher.

1996 Works as French teacher while waiting to hear about her manuscript. Agent Christopher Little finds the right publisher, Bloomsbury.

February 1997 Scottish Arts Council gives her a record grant for a children's author, £8,000 ($13,000). Rowling buys a computer in order to finish the second book.

June 1997 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is published in Britain.

September 1997 An auction in New York sees the U.S. rights to the book eventually bought for $105,000, an unheard-of amount for a children's author. Rowling buys £100 ($160) jacket to wear for interviews.

July 1998 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets published in Britain

July 1999 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban published in Britain, knocking Thomas Harris' Hannibal out of the No. 1 spot on the bestseller list. The New York Times has Harry Potter books in the top three positions on its bestseller list. An unprecedented feat. Warner Bros. buys the film rights to the first two books. Rowling demands that they be live-action movies, not animations, and that she have script approval. She says that she's particularly looking forward to seeing Quidditch matches on the big screen and she hopes that Hagrid will be played by Robbie Coltrane. Mattel Inc., of Barbie fame, buys the merchandising rights to Harry Potter.

1999 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets won the 1999 Federation of Children's Book Groups Children's Book Awards. The award is unique in that children are the testers and decide the winner

2000 Rowling makes Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 list as the 24th-highest celebrity earner in the world, having earned $40 million in 1999, easily beating fellow scribes Grisham, Koontz and Crichton.
Steve Kloves, director of The Fabulous Baker Boys, starts writing screenplay for the movie.

March 2000 Worldwide sales of the first three Harry Potter books stands at more than 30 million in 31 languages. Each of the books has held the No. 1 position on The New York Times bestseller list.

July 8, 2000 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, published simultaneously in Britain and the United States.
In what is said to be the biggest first run in history, over 5 million copies of "Goblet of Fire" were printed in the United States and Britain. The book also won rave reviews from e-merchants which took 400,000 advance orders.

July 8, 2000 The Hogwarts Express departed from King's Cross station in London for a four-day trip ending in Perth, Scotland.
The train stopped at railway stations where Harry Potter fans had their books signed.

July 11, 2000 Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire sold 372,775 copies in the UK on the day of its release, almost as many as the Chamber of Secrets did in a year.

July 12, 2000 Scholastic, which initially printed 3.8 million copies of the book, said it would proceed with a planned reprint of 2 million copies and would add another 1 million copies because of the book's phenomenal popularity Scholastic said it will release 3.2 million copies of the paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on August 15, 2000.

July 14, 2000 Amazon.com says it made 'e-commerce history' on Saturday July 8, 2000 by delivering 250,000 copies of Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire. The feat marks the largest distribution of one item in a single day, Amazon says.

March 2, 2001 Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling today received the title Officer of the Order of the British Empire, or OBE, from H.R.H. Prince Charles

March 12, 2001
Two of text books used by the young wizards at Professor Dumbledore's Hogwarts School - Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Kennilworthy Whisp and Newt Scamander (J.K. Rowling noms de plumes) - were published worldwide in time for Comic Relief's Red Nose Day on 16 March 2001.

November 2001
The movie based on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone received enthusiastic praise.

Other interesting biographies : [Next] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

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