J.K.Rowling

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Joanne “Jo” Rowling, OBE FRSL,  pen names J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, is a British novelist best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series.

  • Born: July 31, 1965 (age 49), Yate, United Kingdom
  • Full name: Joanne Rowling
  • Nickname: Jo Rowling
  • Spouse: Neil Murray(m. 2001), Jorge Arantes (m. 1992–1995)
  • Influenced by: Stephen King,  S. Lewis, Jessica Mitford,

Biography

J.K. Rowling is the famous British author of the worldwide attention gaining Harry Potter series. Her best-selling novels have sold more than 400 million copies and won numerous awards. The books have also been adapted to screen in a series of blockbuster films. Ranked as the twelfth richest woman in the United Kingdom in 2008 with a net worth of US$1 billion, Rowling has risen from rags to riches. Harry Potter upgraded the status of this woman from living on welfare to being a multimillionaire in a short period of just 5 years. Titled the Most Influential Woman in Britain in 2010 by leading magazine editors, J.K Rowling and Harry Potter have become household names globally.

 Joanne Kathleen Rowling, daughter of Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling was born on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England. She is the elder sister of Dianne Rowling who was born 23 month after Jo. Rowling was fond of writing stories since a very young age; she read her short imaginative stories to her sister, Di. Rowling went to the Wyedean School and College after which she attended the University of Exter where she obtained a BA degree in French and Classics. Rowling then worked at Amnesty International in London as a researcher and bilingual secretary.

Rowling conceived the idea of Harry Potter in 1990 while she waited on a 4 hour delayed train trip from Manchester to London. Her mind was suddenly flooded with ideas about a boy who attended wizardry school. She did not have a pen at that time so she kept thinking about it and immediately sat down to write as soon as she reached her flat in Clapham Junction.

Rowling wrote Harry Potter through difficult times of poverty and depression surviving on welfare with her daughter whom she had from a brief marriage in Portugal. She now settled in Edinburg near her sister. The first book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which was renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the U.S. edition was published in Britain in June, 1997. The book was a big hit not only among children but also adults.

 For Rowling, there was no looking back and she published a series of 7 Harry Potter books. In July, 1998, a sequel was published, titled, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The third book in the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was published in December, 1999.With a simultaneous release in UK and USA, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published on July 8, 2000. This particular novel broke all sales records selling 372,775 copies on the first day of its release in UK and 3 million copies in the first 48 hours in the USA. Although Rowling denied rumors of a writer’s block, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, fifth book the series was released three years later followed by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in July, 2005. The seventh and so far last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released in July 2007.

A film version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, directed by Chris Columbus, was released in November 2001. The film debuted on a record 8,200 screens earning an estimated $93.5 million. It ended the year as the top-grossing movie of 2001. The second and third films in the series opened in November 2002 and June 2004 respectively, each enjoying similar record-breaking  success. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, directed by Mike Newell, was released in 2005. The fifth movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, released in July 2007, featured screenwriter Michael Goldenberg, who replaced Steve Kloves, writer of the first four films. The film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), was followed by Harry potter and the deathly hallows part I & II in 2010 and 2011 respectively. 

Rowling’s first book aimed at adults, The Casual Vacancy, was published in September 2012. The novel, a dark comedy about a local election in the small English town of Pagford, received mixed reviews. A book review in The New York Times called the novel “disappointing” and “dull.” A review in The Telegraph, however, gave the book three out of five stars, stating that the novel is “Rowling on bodkin-sharp comic form in the early pages … Jane Austen herself would admire the way [Rowling] shows the news of Barry’s death spreading like a virus round Pagford.”

In 2013, Rowling broke into a new genre: crime fiction. But this new work involved a mystery all of its own. She published the mystery novel Cuckoo Calling that April under the pen name Robert Galbraith. In its first few months of release, the novel had modest sales and received positive reviews. Sales for the work skyrocketed in July when its author’s identity was discovered. According to Bloomberg News report, Rowling said that “I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer, because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”Later that year, Rowling announced a new film venture with Warner Bros. This new film series will be based on Rowling’s hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. According to Entertainment Weekly, Rowling explained in a statement that the movies draw from “the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for 17 years,” but “is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world.”Rowling is also reportedly working on a new Harry Potter-related book. On her website, she announced that she will write “an encyclopedia of Harry’s world” and the royalties from this volume will be donated to charity.In 2014, Rowling published a short story about grown-up Harry Potter and a Hogwarts school reunion on her website Pottermore.
Rowling has been accredited by many prestigious awards and also praised for generating an interest in reading amongst young people at a time when they were discarding this valuable hobby. Rowling lives in England with her husband, Dr. Neil Murray and 3 children.

Publications

Children

Harry Potter series

  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (26 June 1997)
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2 July 1998)
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (8 July 1999)
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (8 July 2000)
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (21 June 2003)
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (16 July 2005)
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (21 July 2007)

Related works

  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (supplement to the Harry Potter series) (1 March 2001)
  • Quidditch Through the Ages (supplement to the Harry Potter series) (1 March 2001)
  • The Tales of Beedle the Bard (supplement to the Harry Potter series) (4 December 2008)

Short stories

  • Harry Potter prequel (July 2008)

Adults

  • The Casual Vacancy (27 September 2012)

Cormoran Strike series

  • The Cuckoo’s Calling (as Robert Galbraith) (18 April 2013)
  • The Silkworm (as Robert Galbraith) (19 June 2014)
  • Career of Evil (as Robert Galbraith) (20 October 2015)

Other

Non-fiction

  • McNeil, Gil and Brown, Sarah, editors (2002). Foreword to the anthology Magic. Bloomsbury.
  • Brown, Gordon (2006). Introduction to “Ending Child Poverty” in Moving Britain Forward. Selected Speeches 1997–2006. Bloomsbury.
  • Sussman, Peter Y., editor (26 July 2006). “The First It Girl: J. K. Rowling reviews Decca: the Letters by Jessica Mitford”. The Daily Telegraph.
  • Anelli, Melissa (2008). Foreword to Harry, A History. Pocket Books.
  • Rowling, J. K. (5 June 2008). “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”. Harvard Magazine.
    • J. K. Rowling, Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and Importance of Imagination, illustrated by Joel Holland, Sphere, 14 April 2015, 80 pages (ISBN 978-1-4087-0678-7).
  • Rowling, J. K. (30 April 2009). “Gordon Brown – The 2009 Time 100”. Time magazine.
  • Rowling, J. K. (14 April 2010). “The Single Mother’s Manifesto”. The Times.
  • Rowling, J. K. (30 November 2012). “I feel duped and angry at David Cameron’s reaction to Leveson”. The Guardian.
  • Rowling, J. K. (17 December 2014). Isn’t it time we left orphanages to fairytales? The Guardian.
  • Rowling, J. K. (guest editor) (28 April 2014). “Woman’s Hour Takeover”. Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4.
  • Very Good Lives (14 April 2015)

Refrences

J.K. Rowling. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved on, Jul 27, 2015, from
http://www.biography.com/people/jk-rowling-40998
N.A (2015). J.K.Rowling .wikipedia. Retrieved on July 27,2015 from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling
J.K. Rowling. (2012). FamousAuthors.org. Retrieved on, July 27, 2015 from
http://www.famousauthors.org/j-k-rowling

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