Joanne Rowling, CH, OBE, FRSL, FRCPE (/ˈroʊlɪŋ/; born 31 July 1965), who writes under the pen names J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, is a British novelist and screenwriter who is best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series. The books have won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies.[1] They have become the best-selling book series in history[2] and been the basis for a series of films, over which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts[3] and was a producer on the final films in the series.[4]
J. K. Rowling
CH OBE FRSL FRCPE
J. K. Rowling 2010.jpg
Rowling at the White House Easter Egg Roll, 2010
Born Joanne Rowling
31 July 1965 (age 52)
Yate, Gloucestershire, England
Pen name
J. K. Rowling
Robert Galbraith
Occupation Novelist, film producer, television producer, screenwriter, philanthropist
Nationality British
Education University of Exeter (1986, B.A.)
Period 1997–present
Genre Fantasy, drama, young adult fiction, tragicomedy, crime fiction
Notable works Harry Potter series
Spouse
Jorge Arantes
(m. 1992; div. 1995)
Neil Murray
(m. 2001)
Children 3
Signature
Website
jkrowling.com
Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990.[5] The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997. There were six sequels, of which the last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in 2007. Since then, Rowling has written four books for adult readers: The Casual Vacancy (2012) and—under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—the crime fiction novels The Cuckoo's Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014) and Career of Evil (2015).[6]
Rowling has lived a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to multi-millionaire status within five years. She is the United Kingdom's best-selling living author, with sales in excess of £238M.[7] The 2016 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £600 million, ranking her as the joint 197th richest person in the UK.[8] Time magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans.[9] In October 2010, Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors.[10] She has supported charities including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Lumos.
Birth and family
A sign reading "Platform 9¾" with half of a luggage trolley installed beneath, at the interior of King's Cross railway station.
Rowling's parents met on a train from King's Cross Station. After Rowling used King's Cross as a gateway into the Wizarding World, it has since become a popular tourist spot.
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer,[18] and Anne Rowling (née Volant), a science technician,[19] on 31 July 1965[20][21] in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol.[22][23] Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964.[24] They married on 14 March 1965.[24] One of her maternal great-grandfathers, Dugald Campbell, was Scottish, born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran.[25][26] Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was French, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War. Rowling originally believed he had won the Légion d'honneur during the war, as she said when she received it herself in 2009. She later discovered the truth when featured in an episode of the UK genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, in which she found out it was a different Louis Volant who won the Legion of Honour. When she heard his story of bravery and discovered the croix de guerre was for "ordinary" soldiers like her grandfather, who had been a waiter, she stated the croix de guerre was "better" to her than the Legion of Honour.[27][28]
Childhood
Rowling's sister Dianne[5] was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old.[23] The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four.[29] She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More.[30][31] Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.[32]
Rowling's childhood home, Church Cottage, Tutshill, Gloucestershire
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories which she frequently read to her sister.[11] Aged nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales.[23] She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother worked in the science department.[19] When she was a young teenager, her great-aunt gave her a copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels.[33] Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling read all of her books.[34]
Rowling has said that her teenage years were unhappy.[18] Her home life was complicated by her mother's illness and a strained relationship with her father, with whom she is not on speaking terms.[18] Rowling later said that she based the character of Hermione Granger on herself when she was eleven.[35] Steve Eddy, her first secondary school English teacher, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English".[18] Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth, owned a turquoise Ford Anglia which she says inspired a flying version that appeared in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.[36] At this time, she listened to the Clash.[37] Rowling took A-levels in English, French and German, achieving two As and a B[24] and was Head Girl.[18]
Education
In 1982, Rowling took the entrance exams for Oxford University but was not accepted[18] and read for a B.A. in French and Classics at the University of Exeter.[38] Martin Sorrell, a French professor at Exeter, remembers "a quietly competent student, with a denim jacket and dark hair, who, in academic terms, gave the appearance of doing what was necessary".[18] Rowling recalls doing little work, preferring to read Dickens and Tolkien.[18] Like many teenagers, she became interested in pop music, listening to the Smiths and Siouxsie Sioux and adopted the look of the latter with back-combed hair and black eyeliner; a look that she would still sport it when beginning the university.[39] After a year of study in Paris, Rowling graduated from Exeter in 1986[18] and moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.[40] In 1988, Rowling wrote a short essay about her time studying Classics titled "What was the Name of that Nymph Again? or Greek and Roman Studies Recalled"; it was published by the University of Exeter's journal Pegasus.[41]
Inspiration and mother's death
After working at Amnesty International in London, Rowling and her then boyfriend decided to move to Manchester,[23] where she worked at the Chamber of Commerce.[24] In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind.[23][42]
When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.[23][43] In December, Rowling's mother Anne died after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis.[23] Rowling was writing Harry Potter at the time and had never told her mother about it.[15] Her mother's death heavily affected Rowling's writing,[15] and she channelled her own feelings of loss by writing about Harry's own feelings of loss in greater detail in the first book.[44]
Marriage, divorce, and single parenthood
A panned out image of city buildings.
Rowling moved to Porto to teach. In 1993, she returned to the UK accompanied by her daughter and three completed chapters of Harry Potter after her marriage had deteriorated.
An advertisement in The Guardian[24] led Rowling to move to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language.[5][34] She taught at night and began writing in the day while listening to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.[18] After 18 months in Porto, she met Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar and found they shared an interest in Jane Austen.[24] They married on 16 October 1992 and their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal.[24] Rowling had previously suffered a miscarriage.[24] The couple separated on 17 November 1993.[24][45] Biographers have suggested that Rowling suffered domestic abuse during her marriage, although the extent is unknown.[24][46] In December 1993, Rowling and her then-infant daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near Rowling's sister[23] with three chapters of what would become Harry Potter in her suitcase.[18]
Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as a failure.[47] Her marriage had failed, and she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as liberating and allowing her to focus on writing.[47] During this period, Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression and contemplated suicide.[48] Her illness inspired the characters known as Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book.[49] Rowling signed up for welfare benefits, describing her economic status as being "poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless."[18][47]
Rowling was left in despair after her estranged husband arrived in Scotland, seeking both her and her daughter.[24] She obtained an Order of Restraint, and Arantes returned to Portugal, with Rowling filing for divorce in August 1994.[24] She began a teacher training course in August 1995 at the Moray House School of Education, at Edinburgh University,[50] after completing her first novel while living on state benefits.[51] She wrote in many cafés, especially Nicolson's Café (owned by her brother-in-law),[52][53] and the Elephant House,[54] wherever she could get Jessica to fall asleep.[23][55] In a 2001 BBC interview, Rowling denied the rumour that she wrote in local cafés to escape from her unheated flat, pointing out that it had heating. One of the reasons she wrote in cafés was that taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep.[55]
Harry Potter
Main article: Harry Potter
The Elephant House, one of the cafés in Edinburgh in which Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter novel[56]
In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter.[57] Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evens, a reader who had been asked to review the book's first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript.[24] A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1,500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London.[24][58] The decision to publish Rowling's book owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next.[59] Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children's books.[60] Soon after, in 1997, Rowling received an £8,000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing.[61]
In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000.[62] Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year, and later, the Children's Book Award. In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for US$105,000. Rowling said that she "nearly died" when she heard the news.[63] In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher's Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, a change Rowling says she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.[64] Rowling moved from her flat with the money from the Scholastic sale, into 19 Hazelbank Terrace in Edinburgh.[52]
Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July 1998 and again Rowling won the Smarties Prize.[65] In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running.[66] She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.[67]
The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the US on 8 July 2000 and broke sales records in both countries. 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equalling the number Prisoner of Azkaban sold during its first year.[68] In the US, the book sold three million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all records.[68] Rowling said that she had had a crisis while writing the novel and had to rewrite one chapter many times to fix a problem with the plot.[69] Rowling was named Author of the Year in the 2000 British Book Awards.[70]
A wait of three years occurred between the release of Goblet of Fire and the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This gap led to press speculation that Rowling had developed writer's block, speculations she denied.[71] Rowling later said that writing the book was a chore, that it could have been shorter, and that she ran out of time and energy as she tried to finish it.[72]
The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on 16 July 2005. It too broke all sales records, selling nine million copies in its first 24 hours of release.[73] In 2006, Half-Blood Prince received the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards.[65]
The title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book was announced on 21 December 2006 as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.[74] In February 2007 it was reported that Rowling wrote on a bust in her hotel room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that she had finished the seventh book in that room on 11 January 2007.[75] Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released on 21 July 2007 (0:01 BST)[76] and broke its predecessor's record as the fastest-selling book of all time.[77] It sold 11 million copies in the first day of release in the United Kingdom and United States.[77] The book's last chapter was one of the earliest things she wrote in the entire series.[78]
Potter queue
Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated US$15 billion,[79] and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history.[77][80] The series, totalling 4,195 pages,[81] has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.[82]
The Harry Potter books have also gained recognition for sparking an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning books for computers and television,[83] although it is reported that despite the huge uptake of the books, adolescent reading has continued to decline.[84]
Harry Potter films
Main article: Harry Potter (film series)
In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels for a seven-figure sum.[85] A film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 16 November 2001, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on 15 November 2002.[86] Both films were directed by Chris Columbus. The film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released on 4 June 2004, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by Mike Newell, and released on 18 November 2005. The film of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released on 11 July 2007.[86] David Yates directed, and Michael Goldenberg wrote the screenplay, having taken over the position from Steve Kloves. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on 15 July 2009.[87] David Yates directed again, and Kloves returned to write the script.[88] Warner Bros. filmed the final instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in two segments, with part one being released on 19 November 2010 and part two being released on 15 July 2011. Yates directed both films.[89][90]
Warner Bros. took considerable notice of Rowling's desires and thoughts when drafting her contract. One of her principal stipulations was the films be shot in Britain with an all-British cast,[91] which has been generally adhered to. Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in the race to tie in their products to the film series, donate US$18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as several community charity programs.[92]
The first four, sixth, seventh, and eighth films were scripted by Steve Kloves; Rowling assisted him in the writing process, ensuring that his scripts did not contradict future books in the series.[93] She told Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) certain secrets about their characters before they were revealed in the books.[94] Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) asked her if Harry died at any point in the series; Rowling answered him by saying, "You have a death scene", thereby not explicitly answering the question.[95] Director Steven Spielberg was approached to direct the first film, but dropped out. The press has repeatedly claimed that Rowling played a role in his departure, but Rowling stated that she had no say in who directed the films and would not have vetoed Spielberg.[96] Rowling's first choice for the director had been Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, but Warner Bros. wanted a family-friendly film and chose Columbus.[97]
Rowling had gained some creative control on the films, reviewing all the scripts[98] as well as acting as a producer on the final two-part instalment, Deathly Hallows.[99]
Rowling, producers David Heyman and David Barron, along with directors David Yates, Mike Newell and Alfonso Cuarón collected the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the 2011 British Academy Film Awards in honour of the Harry Potter film franchise.[100]
In September 2013, Warner Bros. announced an "expanded creative partnership" with Rowling, based on a planned series of films about Newt Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The first film, scripted by Rowling, was released in November 2016 and is set roughly 70 years before the events of the main series.[101] In 2016, it was announced that the series would consist of five films, with the second scheduled for release in November 2018.[102]
Financial success
In 2004, Forbes named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books,[103] the second-richest female entertainer and the 1,062nd richest person in the world.[104] Rowling disputed the calculations and said she had plenty of money, but was not a billionaire.[105] The 2016 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £600 million, ranking her as the joint 197th richest person in the UK.[8] In 2012, Forbes removed Rowling from their rich list, claiming that her US$160 million in charitable donations and the high tax rate in the UK meant she was no longer a billionaire.[106] In February 2013 she was assessed as the 13th most powerful woman in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.[107]
In 2001, Rowling purchased a 19th-century estate house, Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay, near Aberfeldy, in Perth and Kinross.[108] Rowling also owns a £4.5 million Georgian house in Kensington, west London, on a street with 24-hour security.[109]
In 2017, Rowling was worth an estimated £650 million according to the Sunday Times Rich List.[110] She was named the most highly paid author in the world with earnings of £72 million ($95 million) a year by Forbes magazine in 2017.[111]
Remarriage and family
On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Murray (born 30 June 1971), a Scottish doctor,[112] in a private ceremony at her home, Killiechassie House, near Aberfeldy.[113] Their son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003.[114] Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she ceased working on the novel to care for David in his early infancy.[115]
Rowling is a friend of Sarah Brown, wife of former prime minister Gordon Brown, whom she met when they collaborated on a charitable project. When Sarah Brown's son Fraser was born in 2003, Rowling was one of the first to visit her in hospital.[116] Rowling's youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born on 23 January 2005.[117]
In October 2012, a New Yorker magazine article stated that the Rowling family lived in a seventeenth-century Edinburgh house, concealed at the front by tall conifer hedges. Prior to October 2012, Rowling lived near the author Ian Rankin, who later said she was quiet and introspective, and that she seemed in her element with children.[18][118] As of June 2014, the family resides in Scotland.[119]