j.k rowling biography

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Humble beginnings

Harry potter and success, harry on the big screen and on stage, writing for adults, honors and controversy.

What did J.K. Rowling write?

How did j.k. rowling become famous.

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J.K. Rowling

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• Official Site of J. K. Rowling
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What is J.K. Rowling famous for?

J.K. Rowling is the British author who created the popular and critically acclaimed Harry Potter series (seven books published between 1997 and 2007), about a lonely orphan who discovers that he is actually a wizard and enrolls in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

In addition to the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling wrote such companion volumes as Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them (2001) and cowrote a story on which the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) was based. Her adult fiction includes The Casual Vacancy (2012) and the Cormoran Strike series (as Robert Galbraith).

J.K. Rowling started writing about Harry Potter after graduating from the University of Exeter. After a brief marriage and the birth of her daughter, Rowling settled in Edinburgh and lived on public assistance between stints as a French teacher and writing. After many rejections, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published to immediate success.

What is J.K. Rowling’s real name?

J.K. Rowling was born Joanne Rowling. After her publisher recommended she use a gender-neutral pen name, she chose J.K., adding the middle name Kathleen. She published her crime fiction series, which includes The Cuckoo’s Calling , under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

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J.K. Rowling (born July 31, 1965, Yate, near Bristol, England) is a British author, creator of the popular and critically acclaimed Harry Potter series, about a young sorcerer in training.

After graduating from the University of Exeter in 1986, Rowling began working for Amnesty International in London , where she started to write the Harry Potter adventures. In the early 1990s she traveled to Portugal to teach English as a foreign language, but, after a brief marriage and the birth of her daughter, she returned to the United Kingdom, settling in Edinburgh . Living on public assistance between stints as a French teacher, she continued to write.

The first book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997; also published as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ), was released under the name J.K. Rowling. (Her publisher recommended a gender-neutral pen name; born Joanne Rowling, she used J.K., adding the middle name Kathleen.)

The book was an immediate success, appealing to both children, who were its intended audience, and adults. Featuring vivid descriptions and an imaginative story line, it followed the adventures of the unlikely hero Harry Potter, a lonely orphan who discovers that he is actually a wizard and enrolls in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The book received numerous awards, including the British Book Award. Succeeding volumes— Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)—also were best sellers, available in more than 200 countries and some 60 languages. The seventh and final novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , was released in 2007.

The Harry Potter series sparked great enthusiasm among children and was credited with generating a new interest in reading. Film versions of the books were released in 2001–11 and became some of the top-grossing movies in the world. In addition, Rowling wrote the companion volumes Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them (2001), which was adapted into a film series (2016, 2018) that featured screenplays by Rowling; Quidditch Through the Ages (2001); and The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2008)—all of which originated as books read by Harry Potter and his friends within the fictional world of the series. Proceeds from their sales were donated to charity.

She later cowrote a story that became the basis for the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , which premiered in 2016 and was a critical and commercial success, winning an unprecedented nine Olivier Awards, including best new play. In the production, Harry is a husband and father but is still struggling with his past, while his son Albus must contend with his father’s legacy . A book version of the script, which was advertised as the eighth story in the Harry Potter series, was published in 2016. Two years later the play transferred to Broadway, and in 2018 it won six Tony Awards , including best new play.

Rowling made her first foray into adult fiction with The Casual Vacancy (2012; TV miniseries 2015), a contemporary social satire set in a small English town. In 2013 it was revealed that the author had penned the crime novel The Cuckoo’s Calling , using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The Silkworm —the second book in the series, which centred on the detective Cormoran Strike, a down-on-his-luck war veteran—was released in 2014. Later installments included Career of Evil (2015), Lethal White (2018), Troubled Blood (2020), and The Ink Black Heart (2022). A television series based on the books premiered in the United Kingdom in 2017 and in the United States the following year. In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rowling began serializing a new children’s book, The Ickabog , for free online; it was published in November. She described the fairy tale , which was unrelated to Harry Potter, as an exploration of “truth and the abuse of power.” She later published The Christmas Pig (2021), about a boy who loses his favourite toy and then embarks on a fantastical quest to find it.

Rowling was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2001. In 2009 she was named a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour .

However, in June 2020, Rowling drew unaccustomed criticism for taking exception on social media to an article that referenced “people who menstruate.” In part, Rowling tweeted “‘People who menstruate .’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out.” Rowling’s comments were seen as being unsympathetic to or out of touch with the transgender community . Some of the actors in the Harry Potter series, including Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson publicly opposed the author, while others, including Ralph Fiennes , Helena Bonham Carter , and Robbie Coltrane expressed support.

J.K.Rowling Official Site

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My mother and father were both Londoners. They met on a train travelling from King's Cross station to Arbroath in Scotland when they were both eighteen; my father was off to join the Royal Navy, my mother to join the WRNS (the women's equivalent). My mother said she was cold, my father offered her a half share in his coat, and they got married just over a year later, when they were nineteen. Both left the navy and moved to the outskirts of Bristol, in the West of England. My mother gave birth to me when she was twenty. I was a rotund baby. The description in 'Philosopher's Stone' of the photographs of 'what appeared to be a beach ball wearing different coloured bobble hats' would also apply to the pictures of my early years. My sister Di arrived a year and eleven months after me. The day of her birth is my earliest memory, or my earliest datable memory, anyway. I distinctly remember playing with a bit of plasticine in the kitchen while my father rushed in and out of the room, hurrying backwards and forwards to my mother, who was giving birth in their bedroom. I know I didn't invent this memory because I checked the details later with my mother. I also have a vivid mental picture of walking into their bedroom a little while later, hand in hand with my father, and seeing my mother lying in bed in her nightdress next to my beaming sister, who is stark naked with a full head of hair and looks about five years old. Although I clearly pasted together this bizarre false memory out of bits of hearsay when I was a child, it is so vivid that it still comes to mind if I ever think about Di being born.

Di had - and still has - very dark, almost black hair, and dark brown eyes like my mother's, and she was considerably prettier than I was (and she still is). As compensation, I think, my parents decided that I must be 'the bright one'. We both resented our labels. I really wanted to be less freckly-beach-ball-like, and Di, who is now a lawyer, felt justifiably annoyed that nobody had noticed she was not just a pretty face. This undoubtedly contributed to the fact that we spent about three quarters of our childhood fighting like a pair of wildcats imprisoned together in a very small cage. To this day, Di bears a tiny scar just above her eyebrow from the cut I gave her when I threw a battery at her - but I didn't expect to hit her, I thought she'd duck! (This excuse didn't cut much ice with my mother, who was angrier than I had ever seen her). We left the bungalow when I was four and moved to Winterbourne, also on the outskirts of Bristol. Now we lived in a semi-detached house with STAIRS, which prompted Di and I to re-enact, over and over again, a clifftop drama in which one of us would 'dangle' from the topmost stair, holding hands with the other and pleading with them not to let go, offering all manner of bribery and blackmail, until falling to their 'death'. We found this endlessly amusing. I think the last time we played the cliff game was two Christmases ago; my nine-year-old daughter didn't find it nearly as funny as we did. The small amount of time that we didn't spend fighting, Di and I were best friends. I told her a lot of stories and sometimes didn't even have to sit on her to make her stay and listen. Often the stories became games in which we both played regular characters. I was extremely bossy when I stage-managed these long-running plays but Di put up with it because I usually gave her star parts.

There were lots of children around our age living in our new street, among them a brother and sister whose surname was Potter. I always liked their name, whereas I wasn't very fond of my own; 'Rowling' (the first syllable of which is pronounced 'row' as in boat, rather than 'row' as in argument) lent itself to woeful jokes such as 'Rowling stone', 'Rowling pin' and so on. Anyway, the brother has since cropped up in the press claiming to 'be' Harry. His mother has also told reporters that he and I used to dress up as wizards. Neither of these claims is true; in fact, all I remember of the boy in question was that he rode a 'Chopper', which was the bicycle everybody wanted in the seventies, and once threw a stone at Di, for which I hit him hard over the head with a plastic sword (I was the only one allowed to throw things at Di). I enjoyed school in Winterbourne. It was a very relaxed environment; I remember lots of pottery making, drawing and story writing, which suited me perfectly. However, my parents had always harboured a dream of living in the country, and around my ninth birthday we moved for the last time, to Tutshill, a small village just outside Chepstow, in Wales. The move coincided almost exactly with the death of my favourite grandparent, Kathleen, whose name I later took when I needed an extra initial. No doubt the first bereavement of my life influenced my feelings about my new school, which I didn't like at all. We sat all day at roll-top desks facing the blackboard. There were old inkwells set into the desktops. There was a second hole in my desk, which had been gouged out with the point of a compass by the boy who had sat there the year before. He had obviously worked away quietly out of the sight of the teacher. I thought this was a great achievement, and set to work enlarging the hole with my own compass, so that by the time I left that classroom you could comfortably wiggle your thumb through it.

My secondary school, Wyedean, where I went when I was eleven, was the place I met Sean Harris, to whom Chamber of Secrets is dedicated and who owned the original Ford Anglia. He was the first of my friends to learn to drive and that turquoise and white car meant FREEDOM and no more having to ask my father to give me lifts, which is the worst thing about living in the countryside when you are a teenager. Some of the happiest memories of my teenage years involve zooming off into the darkness in Sean's car. He was the first person with whom I really discussed my serious ambition to be a writer and he was also the only person who thought I was bound to be a success at it, which meant much more to me than I ever told him at the time. The worst thing that happened during my teenage years was my mother becoming ill. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which is a disease of the central nervous system, when I was fifteen. Although most people with multiple sclerosis experience periods of remission - when their illness stops progressing for a while, or even improves - Mum was unlucky; from the time of her diagnosis onwards she seemed to become slowly but steadily worse. I think most people believe, deep down, that their mothers are indestructible; it was a terrible shock to hear that she had an incurable illness, but even then, I did not fully realise what the diagnosis might mean.

I left school in 1983 and went to study at the University of Exeter, on the south coast of England. I studied French, which was a mistake; I had succumbed to parental pressure to study 'useful' modern languages as opposed to 'but-where-will-it-lead?' English and really should have stood my ground. On the plus side, studying French meant that I had a year living in Paris as part of my course. After leaving university I worked in London; my longest job was with Amnesty International, the organisation that campaigns against human rights abuses all over the world. But in 1990, my then boyfriend and I decided to move up to Manchester together. It was after a weekend's flat-hunting, when I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, that the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn't have a functioning pen with me, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one. I think, now, that this was probably a good thing, because I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen).

I began to write 'Philosopher's Stone' that very evening, although those first few pages bear no resemblance at all to anything in the finished book. I moved up to Manchester, taking the swelling manuscript with me, which was now growing in all sorts of strange directions, and including ideas for the rest of Harry's career at Hogwarts, not just his first year. Then, on December 30th 1990, something happened that changed both my world and Harry's forever: my mother died. It was a terrible time. My father, Di and I were devastated; she was only forty five years old and we had never imagined - probably because we could not bear to contemplate the idea - that she could die so young. I remember feeling as though there was a paving slab pressing down upon my chest, a literal pain in my heart. Nine months later, desperate to get away for a while, I left for Portugal, where I had got a job teaching English in a language institute. I took with me the still-growing manuscript of Harry Potter, hopeful that my new working hours (I taught in the afternoon and evening) would lend themselves to pressing on with my novel, which had changed a lot since my mother had died. Now, Harry's feelings about his dead parents had become much deeper, much more real. In my first weeks in Portugal I wrote my favourite chapter in Philosopher's Stone, The Mirror of Erised. I had hoped that when I returned from Portugal I would have a finished book under my arm. In fact, I had something even better: my daughter. I had met and married a Portuguese man, and although the marriage did not work out, it had given me the best thing in my life. Jessica and I arrived in Edinburgh, where my sister Di was living, just in time for Christmas 1994.

I intended to start teaching again and knew that unless I finished the book very soon, I might never finish it; I knew that full-time teaching, with all the marking and lesson planning, let alone with a small daughter to care for single-handedly, would leave me with absolutely no spare time at all. And so I set to work in a kind of frenzy, determined to finish the book and at least try and get it published. Whenever Jessica fell asleep in her pushchair I would dash to the nearest cafe and write like mad. I wrote nearly every evening. Then I had to type the whole thing out myself. Sometimes I actually hated the book, even while I loved it. Finally it was done. I covered the first three chapters in a nice plastic folder and set them off to an agent, who returned them so fast they must have been sent back the same day they arrived. But the second agent I tried wrote back and asked to see the rest of the manuscript. It was far and away the best letter I had ever received in my life, and it was only two sentences long. It took a year for my new agent, Christopher, to find a publisher. Lots of them turned it down. Then, finally, in August 1996, Christopher telephoned me and told me that Bloomsbury had 'made an offer.' I could not quite believe my ears. 'You mean it's going to be published?' I asked, rather stupidly. 'It's definitely going to be published?' After I had hung up, I screamed and jumped into the air; Jessica, who was sitting in her high-chair enjoying tea, looked thoroughly scared. And you probably know what happened next.

J. K. Rowling

Author of the Harry Potter Series

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Who Is J.K. Rowling?

J. K. Rowling is the author of the hugely popular Harry Potter books.

Dates: July 31, 1965 --

Also Known As Joanne Rowling, Jo Rowling

J. K. Rowling's Childhood

J.K. Rowling was born at Yate General Hospital as Joanne Rowling (with no middle name) on July 31, 1965, in Gloucestershire, England. (Although Chipping Sodbury is often mentioned as her birthplace, her birth certificate says Yate.)

Rowling's parents, Peter James Rowling and Anne Volant, met on a train on their way to join the British navy (the navy for Peter and the Women's Royal Naval Service for Anne). They married a year later, at age 19. At age 20, the young couple became new parents when Joanne Rowling arrived, followed by Joanne's sister, Diane "Di," 23 months later.

When Rowling was young, the family moved twice. At age four, Rowling and her family moved to Winterbourne. It was here that she met a brother and sister who lived in her neighborhood with the last name Potter.

At age nine, Rowling moved to Tutshill. The timing of the second move was clouded by the death of Rowling's favorite grandmother, Kathleen. Later, when Rowling was asked to use initials as a pseudonym for the Harry Potter books to attract more boy readers, Rowling chose "K" for Kathleen as her second initial to honor her grandmother.

At age eleven, Rowling began attending the Wyedean School, where she worked hard for her grades and was terrible at sports. Rowling says that the character Hermione Granger is loosely based on Rowling herself at this age.

At age 15, Rowling was devastated when given the news that her mother had become seriously ill with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease. Instead of ever entering remission, Rowling's mother grew increasingly sick.

Rowling Goes to College

Pressured by her parents to become a secretary, Rowling attended the University of Exeter beginning at age 18 (1983) and studied French. As part of her French program, she lived in Paris for a year.

After college, Rowling stayed in London and worked at several jobs, including at Amnesty International.

The Idea for Harry Potter

While on a train to London in 1990, having just spent the weekend apartment-hunting in Manchester, Rowling came up with the concept for Harry Potter. The idea, she says, "simply fell into my head."

Pen-less at the time, Rowling spent the remainder of her train-ride dreaming about the story and began to write it down as soon as she arrived home.

Rowling continued to write snippets about Harry and Hogwarts but wasn't done with the book when her mother died on December 30, 1990. Her mother's death hit Rowling hard. In an attempt to escape the sorrow, Rowling accepted a job teaching English in Portugal.

Her mother's death translated into more realistic and complex feelings for Harry Potter about his parents' deaths.

Rowling Becomes a Wife and Mother

In Portugal, Rowling met Jorge Arantes and the two married on October 16, 1992. Although the marriage proved a bad one, the couple had one child together, Jessica (born July 1993). After getting divorced on November 30, 1993, Rowling and her daughter moved to Edinburgh to be near Rowling's sister, Di, at the end of 1994.

The First Harry Potter Book

Before starting another full-time job, Rowling was determined to finish her Harry Potter manuscript. Once she had completed it, she typed it up and sent it to several literary agents.

After acquiring an agent, the agent shopped around for a publisher. After a year of searching and a number of publishers turning it down, the agent finally found a publisher willing to print the book. Bloomsbury made an offer for the book in August 1996.

Rowling's first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ( Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was the U.S. title) became hugely popular, attracting an audience of young boys and girls as well as adults. With the public demanding more, Rowling quickly got to work on the following six books, with the last one published in July 2007.

Hugely Popular

In 1998, Warner Bros. bought the film rights and since then, extremely popular movies have been made of the books. From the books, the films, and the merchandise bearing Harry Potter images, Rowling has become one of the richest people in the world.

Rowling Marries Again

Between all of this writing and publicity, Rowling remarried on December 26, 2001, to Dr. Neil Murray. In addition to her daughter Jessica from her first marriage, Rowling has two additional children: David Gordon (born March 2003) and Mackenzie Jean (born January 2005).

The Harry Potter Books

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (June 26, 1997, in U.K.) (called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the U.S., September 1998)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (July 2, 1998, in U.K.) (June 2, 1999, in the U.S.)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (July 8, 2000, in both U.K. and U.S.)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (June 21, 2003, in both U.K. and U.S.)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 16, 2005, in both U.K. and U.S.)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (July 21, 2007, in both U.K. and U.S.)
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How J.K. Rowling went from struggling single mom to the world's most successful author

J.K. Rowling 's life is a classic rags-to-riches story. Her parents never received a college education, she lived for years with government assistance as a single mother, and overcame a dozen rejections from publishers to become, almost overnight, one of the most successful and widely read authors in the history of the world.

After a couple of decades of "Harry Potter," Rowling has turned the boy wizard into an entertainment franchise including books , movies , a play , a theme park, and more. Here's how the author found her path to success.

J.K. Rowling — born Joanne Rowling — grew up in Gloucestershire, England, and always knew she wanted to be an author.

Rowling was constantly writing and telling stories to her younger sister, Dianne.

"Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit," Rowling said in a 1998 interview . "He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee. And ever since Rabbit and Miss Bee, I have wanted to be a writer, though I rarely told anyone so."

When she was nine, Rowling moved near the Forest of Dean, which figures prominently in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," and spent the rest of her childhood there.

Her parents married when they were 20, and neither attended college: Her father was an aircraft engineer at Rolls Royce and her mother was a high school science technician.

"I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels," Rowling said in her 2008 Harvard University commencement speech . "However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

Rowling had difficult years when she was younger.

Rowling never had it as bad as Harry living with the Dursleys, but she described her teenage years as being filled with difficulty.

" I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life," she told the New Yorker .

When Rowling was 15, her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She died a decade later, before Rowling became a published author. Later on, one of her philanthropic projects was founding the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic at the University of Edinburgh with a gift of $16 million.

After graduating from college, she had a stint working for Amnesty International.

The author studied French at the University of Exeter, graduating in 1986. According to her official biography , she "read so widely outside her French and Classics syllabus that she clocked up a fine of £50 for overdue books at the University library." Her Classics knowledge was later used when she came up with the names for spells in the "Harry Potter" series .

After graduating, Rowling worked at the research desk for Amnesty International, doing translation work. She found the work important — "I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them," she said — but it didn't suit her, as she said in a later interview .

" I am one of the most disorganized people in the world and, as I later proved, the worst secretary ever," she said. "All I ever liked about working in offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no-one was looking. I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad, or choosing excellent names for the characters."

In 1990, she began planning out the "Harry Potter" series.

On a delayed train from Manchester to London's King's Cross station, Rowling came up with the idea for "Harry Potter." Over the next five years, she outlined the plots for seven books in the series, writing in longhand and amassing scraps of notes written on different papers. Separately, she also  started working on an adult novel that she never finished .

The most traumatizing day of her life, Rowling said , was on New Year's Day in 1991, when her mother died, when Rowling was 25.

"Dad called me at seven o'clock the next morning and I just knew what had happened before he spoke," she told The Telegraph in a 2006 interview . "As I ran downstairs, I had that kind of white noise panic in my head but could not grasp the enormity of my mother having died. ... Barely a day goes by when I do not think of her. There would be so much to tell her, impossibly much."

At 26, she moved to Portugal to teach English. There, she got married, and had a daughter.

Fed up with secretary work, Rowling moved to Porto, Portugal, and taught English to students. There, she met and married  Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes and had a child, Jessica — named after Jessica Mitford, one of her favorite authors — in July 1993. (Rowling previously had a miscarriage, in 1992, according to The Scotsman .) By November of 1993, the couple had separated.

In Porto, Rowling started a "book [that] was about a boy who found out he was a wizard and was sent off to wizard school." When she moved back to Britain, at the end of 1993, she had "half a suitcase was full of papers covered with stories about Harry Potter."

She lived in a small flat while going to cafes to write "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Without a job, Rowling visited different  Edinburgh cafés and hunkered down to write her first novel on a typewriter . She often brought along Jessica, who slept in a pram next to her.

During that period, Rowling lived off government welfare.

"I couldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t had a few years where I’ d been really as poor as it’s possible to go in the UK without being homeless," Rowing said in 2012 . "We were on welfare, what we call welfare, I would call benefits, for a couple years."

The experience helped define her political activism later in life. She frequently criticizes politicians who attempt to cut back on government welfare programs. She's also talked about how the "single mother" label followed her throughout her career, and became the president of Gingerbread, a 100-year-old organization that supports single parents and their children.

"I was a Single Parent, and a 'Single Parent On Benefits' to boot. Patronage was almost as hard to bear as stigmatization." she wrote in an essay . "I would say to any single parent currently feeling the weight of stereotype or stigmatization that I am prouder of my years as a single mother than of any other part of my life."

She considered committing suicide.

It wasn't an easy period for her. In a 2008 interview with the Sunday Times, Rowling said she was severely depressed and sought professional help.

"We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable,'" Rowling said . "Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted."

Elsewhere, Rowling said that she used her experience of depression to describe the Dementors in her "Harry Potter" books.

"It was entirely conscious," Rowling told The Times . "And entirely from my own experience. Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced."

Rowling has attended therapy sessions to treat her depression at other times in life as well, she told The Guardian , like during the period where she became very famous very quickly.

"For a few years I did feel I was on a psychic treadmill, trying to keep up with where I was," she said. "I had to do it again when my life was changing so suddenly — and it really helped. I'm a big fan of it, it helped me a lot."

In 1995, Rowling finished the first "Harry Potter" book and sent it to publishers — where it was roundly rejected.

Like many other authors, Rowling received a lot of rejection letters. Her book was accepted by Christopher Little, an "obscure London literary agent," according to the New Yorker . Twelve publishers rejected it .

Rowling finally signed a deal with a small publisher that made her pick a pen name.

After a year, Little made a deal to print 500 copies of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" with Bloomsbury, a relatively young publishing company, and secured her a £2,500 advance.

The publisher anticipated that boys may not want to read books written by a woman, so it suggested she pick a pen name with two initials. The "J" stands for Joanne, her real name. She has no middle name, so she picked "K" for "Kathleen," which was the name of her paternal grandmother.

"Philosopher's Stone" appeared in print in 1997.

The book was a hit.

By March of 1999, 300,000 copies were sold in the UK . "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" won numerous awards, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, which is voted by both adults and children. In the United States, Rowling sold the book to Scholastic, which distributes it under the title "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," for more than $100,000, an unprecedented amount at the time. Then she bought her own apartment.

In 1998, Warner Bros. bought the film rights to the first two "Harry Potter" books.

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," the second book in the series, was sold in the UK in July of 1998, also to huge acclaim and sales. (It took another year for Scholastic to publish it in the United States.) In October, Rowling announced that she signed a seven-figure deal with Warner Bros. to adapt the books into movies.

By the time the movie series finished its run with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2" in 2011, it was the highest-grossing movie franchise of all time . But it was still a risk for the movie studio: No one knew when or how the series would end, and Rowling made significant demands over details like licensing toys with fast food companies.

The release of "Goblet of Fire" in 2000 represented a huge jump in popularity.

Rowling's first three "Harry Potter" books — "Sorcerer's Stone," "Chamber of Secrets," and "Prisoner of Azkaban" all made Rowling even more popular.

Writing her next book, "Goblet of Fire," was an intense experience. At 636 pages, it was twice as long as "Azkaban" yet written in the same one-year timespan. Her publishers coordinated to release the book simultaneously around the world for the first time, putting pressure on her to finish it on deadline. During that period, Rowling was also involved in making the movie version of the first "Harry Potter" book.

After the book's release, Rowling slowed down her writing pace. She told Bloomsbury she couldn't write her next book in just one year.

"The pressure of it had become overwhelming," she told the New Yorker . "I found it difficult to write, which had never happened to me before in my life. The intensity of the scrutiny was overwhelming. I had been utterly unprepared for that. And I needed to step back. Badly needed to step back."

Rowling also later talked about how she hadn't had time to process the level of her fame. She hadn't (yet) purchased an expensive mansion or yacht; she'd been focusing on finishing her books and on her personal relationships. Taking some time to breathe was necessary for her mental health.

"I needed to stop and I needed to try to come to terms with what had happened to me," Rowling told the Times of London in 2003 . "I couldn’t grasp what had happened. And I don’t think many people could have done. The thing got so huge."

After "Goblet of Fire," Rowling kept writing, though. She published two short supplementary books in 2001 — "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and "Quidditch Through the Ages" — the profits of which went to charity. "Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix," her longest book, was released in 2003.

The first "Harry Potter" movie made nearly $1 billion.

The 2001 movie adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (or "Philosopher's," depending on where you lived) was a box office juggernaut. Starring Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and a stable of classically-trained British actors rounding out the cast, it was an enormous undertaking. The Christopher Columbus-directed movie grossed $974.8 million at the box office and paved the way for what would become the most successful movie franchise in history.

A month after the movie's release, she got remarried.

In a private ceremony, Rowling married Neil Murray, a Scottish doctor. (They had a son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, in 2003.)

She was so famous that she wore a disguise when she bought her wedding dress.

"I just wanted to be able to get married to Neil without any rubbish happening," she told The Guardian .

Rowling makes sure she isn't a billionaire.

In 2004, Forbes reported that Rowling was the first person to become a billionaire (in US dollars) by writing books. Later, she dropped off the list because she gave so much money to charity.

In addition to her creative work, she's a major philanthropist.

Rowling has founded and supported dozens of charities with her fortune. In 2003, she said she sets aside one day a week to do "charity stuff."

One of them is Comic Relief, an anti-poverty charity that gets the proceeds from sales of the "Quidditch Through the Ages" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" books. She is also the president of Gingerbread, which supports single parents, and she has donated millions to the study of multiple sclerosis, which her mother suffered from before her death.

Her biggest effort may be Lumos, named for the "Harry Potter" spell that conjures light. The organization seeks to end the institutionalization of children. All of the proceeds from sales of "Tales of Beedle the Bard" go to the charity.

Rowling also wrote and auctioned off a prequel short story from the "Harry Potter" universe, about James Potter and Sirius Black escaping a few muggle cops. The copy was later stolen .

She finishes the book series in 2007.

In 2007, Rowling finishes the series with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." It is the fastest-selling book of all time. The seven books, in total, have sold more than 450 million copies  and have been translated into 67 languages.

The year also sees the release of the "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" movie adaptation, and Rowling publishes "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," a companion book to the series, in December.

Rowling was heavily involved with The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, Orlando.

In 2010, Universal Studios opened The Wizarding World of Harry Potter , a theme park that recreated Hogsmeade, let attendants pick a magical wand, and ride a roller coaster through Hogwarts or on a Hippogriff. It's so popular that attendance at Universal Studios increased by 66% at its first full year, and it's now within striking distance of Disney, which ruled the theme park industry for decades.

Bloomberg reported that Rowling involved herself in every minutiae of the project, banning hamburgers, pizza, and Coca-Cola and instead ensuring that only British-style food would be served. Engineers proclaimed Rowling's sketches for Hogsmeade's wonky, surrealistic buildings as architecturally impossible, but eventually they figured it out anyway.

2011 is another major year for her: The last "Harry Potter" movie is released.

The eighth and last "Harry Potter" movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2," (the final book was split into two movies) is released and breaks the record for the biggest opening weekend of all time. Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint say goodbye to the roles that will define their careers for the rest of their lives. It's the end of a major chapter for "Harry Potter" and for millions of fans.

Then she released a treasure trove of trivia.

Rowling had long promised an encyclopedia that would index every factoid from her wide-ranging magical universe. In late 2011, it came in a different form than expected: as a website. Pottermore launched as a sort of hybrid game and "Harry Potter" Wikipedia, where users could sign up, get sorted into a Hogwarts house, and win points while also reading bits of information about different elements of the "Harry Potter" universe.

Some of the entries were illuminating, like the tragic backstory on Professor McGonagall . Others, like the ingredients that go into different potions, were more trivial. Still, it delighted hardcore fans. Since 2011, Pottermore has moved away from the game component and acted more as a depository for Rowling's material. She's expanded it , and added things like short stories about the founding of Ilvermorny, the American wizarding school , and a family history for Harry Potter .

The next year, Rowling released her first non-"Harry Potter" novel.

The release of "A Casual Vacancy" was anticipated with some uncertainty and trepidation. It was said to be about local politics in a small British town , and be decidedly about adult life and sex and other stuff that never made it into the books she wrote about child wizards. When it was released in September 2012, the reactions were mixed but mostly positive . Some dismissed it as an example of the limits of Rowling's imagination, others praised it for an incisive, if sprawling, look at social issues that effect people living in the U.K.

She secretly wrote a book under a male pseudonym.

Reports surfaced in 2012 that Rowling was working on a crime novel, but the author stayed silent about what she'd write next.

In April of 2013, Little Brown published "The Cuckoo's Calling," about the fictional detective Cormoran Strike and his ambitious assistant Robin Ellacott. It was purported to have been written by a guy named Robert Galbraith. Reviews were good and sales were unremarkable.

A family friend of one of Rowling's lawyers let slip that Galbraith was, in fact, a pen name for J.K. Rowling. On Amazon, sales of "The Cuckoo's Calling" rose by more than 150,000% .  She's since written two more "Cormoran Strike" novels, "The Silkworm" and "Career of Evil," and said she plans to write more "Strike" novels than "Harry Potter." The books are being adapted into a miniseries for the BBC.

Throughout her career, Rowling has been politically active.

Rowling is known for her leftist political views, generally supporting Britain's Labour Party (though she is not supportive of Jeremy Corbyn, the party's current leader). She donated £1 million to the party in 2008 and frequently cites her experience living off of government benefits while she was writing "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" when politicians threaten to cut funding for similar programs.

In 2014, Rowling, a citizen of Scotland, vocally opposed Scotland leaving Great Britain in the Scottish referendum. She donated  £1 million to the campaign to stay. And in 2016, she campaigned against Brexit.

In 2016, Rowling released a "Harry Potter" prequel play and sequel movie.

Last year was another landmark year for "Harry Potter." The play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" premiered in London, with a book version released around the world in July. Finally, "Harry Potter" fans had another chance to go to a bookstore at midnight and buy a new entry in the series.

The play was written with John Tiffany and Jack Thorne. Its story begins 19 years after the events of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," and it concerns the next generation of wizards that followed in the wake of Harry , Ron , and Hermione .

"It was 17 years and just because I’ve stopped on the page doesn’t mean my imagination stopped," Rowling told The Guardian . "It’s like running a very long race. You can’t just stop dead at the finishing line. I had some material and some ideas and themes, and we three made a story."

Later that year, the first movie in a spinoff series, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," was released.

Instead of outsourcing screenplay duties to Steve Kloves, who wrote the "Harry Potter" movies, Rowling wrote the screenplay for "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" herself. (Kloves remains a producer for the new series.) It takes place 70 years earlier than "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," and concerns the adventures of Newt Scamander, a "magizoologist" whose magical animals escape his enchanted briefcase while he's on a trip in New York.

Starring Eddie Redmayne as Scamander, the movie was a box office and critical success . In the movie , Rowling expanded her universe even further , introducing new magical concepts and characters .

She plans four more movies in the series , and signs indicate that the storyline will eventually end up with Albus Dumbledore (to be played by Jude Law) dueling Gellert Grindelwald (played by Johnny Depp) , an important event that foreshadows the "Harry Potter" series . Her screenplay was also published as a book.

Up next: More "Fantastic Beasts" movies, "Cuckoo's Calling" books, and a worldwide tour of "Cursed Child."

The next Cormoran Strike book, "Lethal White," will arrive on September 18, followed by "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" on November 16. The most successful author alive isn't stopping anytime soon.

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Biography Online

Facts J.K. Rowling

J.K.Rowling was born July 31, 1965, Yate, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom

Spouse: Neil Murray (m. 2001), Jorge Arantes (m. 1992–1993)

Her three children: Jessica Arantes, Mackenzie Murray, David Murray

• She wrote her first book, “Rabbit,” about a rabbit with measles aged six in 1971.
• After her mother praised ‘Rabbit’ – Rowling replied ‘then get it published’ – admitting she didn’t know where that idea came from.
• Her first school – St Michael’s Primary School, was founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More.
• She was the Head Girl at Wyedean School and College
• In 1982, she took the entrance exams to Oxford University but didn’t pass.
• She graduated from the University of Exeter with a BA in French and Classics
• After university J.K.Rowling worked as a researcher for Amnesty International and continues to support the charity financially.
• Rowling was living on state benefits when she was writing the first Harry Potter book. She became a multi-millionaire within five years.
• Her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and died during the writing of Harry Potter.
• Rowling has stated her mother was a big influence on the Harry Potter series.
• The frightening dementors in the Harry Potter books were created to reflect her period of clinical depression.
• The idea for the Harry Potter series came whilst she was stuck on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990.
• She mentions the inspiration came unannounced, and she furiously wrote them down:

“I really don’t know where the idea came from. It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head.”

• She began writing the first page of Philosopher’s Stone in her flat by Clapham Junction that evening.
• She wrote the first three chapters of her first Harry Potter book in Porto, often whilst listening to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.
• In 1993, after her first marriage broke down she moved to Edinburgh with three chapters of the Philosopher’s Stone in her suitcase.
• J.K. Rowling stated in 2000, that she loved inventing the names of her imaginary world. She even wrote many names on the back of an aeroplane sick bag. – “I invented the names of the Houses on the back of an airplane sick bag. This is true. I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.” – J. K. Rowling.
• Seven years after graduating, as an unemployed single mother, Rowling felt she was ‘the biggest failure I knew” But also this failure was liberating
• Rowling finished her first Harry Potter book in Edinburgh, often writing in local cafes because she wanted to take her child out for walks.
• In first editions of Harry Potter, her author name was Joanne Rowling, but fearing boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, she used J.K.Rowling.
• Her first fan letter was from a girl called Francesca Gray – who addressed her as: ‘Dear Sir…’
• Twelve publishing houses rejected her original Harry Potter manuscripts. Her book was finally taken on by Bloomsbury, who gave her a small advance.
• In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher’s Stone with an initial print run of 1,000. First editions can now go for between £16,000 and £25,000
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released on 8 July 2000 selling 372,775 copies on its first day in the UK
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, released on 16 July 2005, sold nine million copies in its first 24 hours of release.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, released on February 2007 sold 11 million copies on its first day.
• In 2018, the seven-book Harry Potter series has sold more than 450 million copies worldwide;
• The character of Hagrid is supposed to be based on a big, intimidating ‘Hell’s Angel’ from the West Country who used to sit down and talk about his petunias.
• J.K. Rowling stated when she planned book, initially, Ron’s dad was destined to die after the attack by deadly snake Nagini in Order of the Phoenix. However, she changed her mind, as she felt the book needed good fatherly figures.
• Over the course of the eight Harry Potter Films, the scar of Harry Potter was applied to Daniel Radcliffe or his stunt double a total of 5,800 times.
• Rowling said her parents met at King’s Cross station, creating the idea for platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross.
• The global brand of Harry Potter is worth an estimated $15 billion
• She was a big fan of Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, Dickens and J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Rowling stated her most influential writer was Communist and civil rights activist Jessica Mitford. Mitford went to Spain to fight in the Civil War against fascist Franco.
• Rowling identifies herself as a Christian, though not a committed Christian.
• Referring to criticisms of witchcraft in her books, Rowling has stated: “I believe in God, not magic.”
• Her adult book ‘The Casual Vacancy’ was written under a pseudonym, Robert Galbraith.
• In September 2011, Rowling was named a “core participant” in the Leveson Inquiry into press intrusion. Rowling has often faced harassment from the press.
• In October 2010, Rowling was named the “Most Influential Woman in Britain” by UK magazine editors.
• March 2, 2001 was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) by H.R.H. Prince Charles.
• In 2004, Forbes claimed Rowling’s worth was $1 billion, making her the first billion-dollar author. But, Rowling claimed she was not so rich as that.
• She has supported the British Labour party with a £1 million donation.
• J.K.Rowling has supported several charities, such as Gingerbread (supporting single parent families), Comic Relief and Lumos.
• In 2000, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust, which uses its annual budget of £5.1 million to combat poverty and social inequality
• In 2001, the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint by Rowling over a series of unauthorised photographs of her with her daughter on the beach in Mauritius published in OK! Magazine .
• In 2017, her net worth is estimated at $650 million. The Harry Potter movie franchise has grossed over $7.7 billion.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “ Facts J.K. Rowling” , Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net – 12th Dec. 2016, Last Updated. 5th November 2019.

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J. K. Rowling Biography

Born: July 31, 1965 Chipping Sodbury, England English writer

J. K. Rowling is an English author of novels for young people, and caused an overnight sensation with her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (… Sorceror's Stone in the United States) , which rose to the top of the children's best-seller lists in 1998. Even before publication, publishers in the United States were competing for rights to the book, with the top bidder paying one hundred thousand dollars—the most ever for a first novel by a children's book author.

A British upbringing

Born near Bristol, England, Joanne K. Rowling grew up with a younger sister and an intense interest in storytelling. Rabbits played a large part in her early tales, for Rowling and her sister badly wanted a rabbit. Her first story, at age five or six, involved a rabbit named, quite logically, Rabbit, who got the measles (a contagious virus that occurs in children) and visited his friend, a giant bee named Miss Bee. Rowling said in J. K. Rowling: The Wizard Behind Harry Potter , "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 longtime country-living dream to reality for Rowling's parents, both Londoners, and the nine-yearold Rowling learned to love the countryside. She and her sister could wander unsupervised amid the fields and play along the River Wye. Rowling once noted that the only problem with her new life was school. 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. A quiet and unathletic child, English was her favorite subject, and she created 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 impulsive and less of a hobby in her teenage years. Attending Exeter University, Rowling studied French after her parents had advised her that bilingualism (speaking two languages) would lead to a successful career as a secretary.

Of naps and "Harry Potter"

Back in England, Rowling decided to settle in Edinburgh and prepared to raise 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 coffee-houses where the understanding management allowed her space for her papers. 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: her book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, would be published in England. And then a few months later, the American rights were bought for an amazing price, and Rowling said good-bye to teaching.

Harry Potter, an orphan, has led a miserable life with the Dursley family, his aunt, uncle, and cousin, who force him to live in a broom closet under the stairs. Small, skinny, and wearing glasses, Harry is an unlikely hero. The only thing physically interesting about Harry is the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. One day Harry gets a letter telling him that he has been admitted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Thus begins the magical story of Harry Potter. Rayma Turton in Magpies called the book "a ripping yarn," and a "school story with a twist."

Sequels prove equally popular

Even as enthusiastic reviews were pouring in from America, Rowling's second installment of the "Harry Potter" saga, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in England to another rave review. The third installment of the 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. Harry's life-threatening adventures in The Prisoner of Azkaban, the fourth Harry Potter novel, indicated a subtle but distinct shift away from the lightheartedness that characterizes the first two novels. Such a shift was "inevitable," Rowling admitted in a School Library Journal interview. "If you are writing about Good and Evil, there comes a point where you have to get serious."

In November 2001, Harry Potter gained even more fame when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone graced the big screen as a major motion picture. Rowling's magical creations cast a spell over theatergoers as the movie was both a commercial and critical success. Rowling lives in Scotland with her daughter, Jessica, and second husband, Neil Murray, whom she married in December 2000. She is currently working on the remaining novels in the "Harry Potter" series.

For More Information

Chippendale, Lisa A. Triumph of the Imagination: The Story of Writer J. K. Rowling. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002.

Compson, William. J. K. Rowling. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2002.

Shapiro, Marc. J. K. Rowling: The Wizard Behind Harry Potter. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000.

Steffens, Bradley. J. K. Rowling. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2002.

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J.K. Rowling's Incredible Rags to Riches Story

Poor and almost homeless, the 'Harry Potter' creator eventually became the world's first billionaire author.

In 1990, as she waited on a delayed train bound for London, an unknown author named Joanne Rowland began musing on the idea of an adolescent boy who attends a school for wizards. Thus marked the conception of Harry Potter, but it would take far more than a magic spell and the wave of a wand to bring him to life.

At the time Harry first popped into her head, Rowling was caught in that no man's land between college graduation and the pursuit of a life's passion. She had worked a series of temp jobs since earning her French degree at the University of Exeter and was looking at a move to Manchester to live with her boyfriend.

Everything abruptly changed at the end of the year when her mother, Anne, succumbed to a decade-plus battle with multiple sclerosis at age 45. Devastated, Rowling sought refuge in the thrill of a new, adventurous life, and moved to Portugal to teach English.

After her mother's death, Rowling moved to Portugal for a fresh start

Settling in the coastal city of Porto, Rowling scrawled out the beginnings of Harry Potter before her evening classes and hit the clubs with her roommates afterward. She eventually met and fell in love with aspiring journalist Jorge Arantes.

Rowling soon discovered she was pregnant, moved in with Arantes' mother and had a miscarriage. Ignoring her friends' concerns about the state of her relationship, she married Arantes in October 1992, became pregnant again and this time gave birth to a baby girl, Jessica, the following July.

Meanwhile, Arantes had grown increasingly abusive. The final straw came with an ugly fight in November 1993, when Arantes harshly slapped his wife and threw her out of the home without Jessica. Rowling soon returned – with a police presence – to take her daughter, and within weeks they were on a plane back to the U.K., along with the first three chapters of Harry Pott er .

Upon returning to the U.K., Rowling was 'poor' and contemplated suicide

After spending the holidays at the Edinburgh, Scotland, home of her sister and brother-in-law, Rowling applied for benefits that helped her secure a small apartment and weekly stipend. She grudgingly accepted a friend's loan for a deposit on a more welcoming apartment and began spending her days at her brother-in-law's café with Jessica by her side as she continued the long march through her manuscript.

Barely getting by with the help of friends and family – "as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless," she later described it – Rowling found herself increasingly despondent, angry over her failures and guilty about an inability to provide for her daughter. As a reminder of her missteps, Arantes showed up in an attempt to reconcile, though he retreated after Rowling obtained a restraining order.

Harboring thoughts of suicide, Rowling realized she needed to get her act together, for the sake of her daughter, if no one else. Her outlook improved after therapy, and she set her sights on a one-year teaching training course, though there was still the matter of unfinished business with the boy wizard who flitted through her imagination.

Publishers rejected the first 'Harry Potter' book

Upon completing her manuscript in 1995, Rowling followed through with the plan for teachers' certification while hunting down literary representation. A three-chapter sample of Harry Potter was enough to reel in a London agent Christopher Little, though the regional publishing houses seemed largely immune to the magic of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Co.

Following a dozen rejections, Little finally found a taker in London publishing house Bloomsbury, which offered a £1,500 advance. Rowling also snagged an £8,000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council, enabling her to finish a Harry Potter sequel on a brand-new typewriter.

On June 26, 1997, the author saw her hard work come to fruition with the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the U.K. She was now known as "J.K. Rowling," due to concerns about how boys would respond to a female writer, but the name change was fitting in that her life of anonymity was about to end.

Rowling became a billionaire in less than 10 years after the first book was published

Within days of Harry's debut, children's publishing powerhouse Scholastic had bid more than $100,000 for the American publishing rights (They renamed the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ). The highly successful sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets followed a year later, and by the fall of 1998, Warner Bros. was on board with a feature-film deal.

The rest reads like a fairy tale: Rowland was a billionaire by 2004 when Hollywood was still only halfway through eight Harry Potter films and well before the launch of another cash-cow franchise, Fantastic Beasts . She also found love again, with Scottish doctor Neil Murray, and continued churning out best-sellers on the strength of her name brand and addictive prose.

And while her life looks charmed from the outside, the author no doubt carries the reminder of her years as a struggling, single mom wherever she goes, like the scar on the forehead of the character that made her so famous.

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Biography of J.K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 in Gloucestershire, England. Her parents, Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling (née Volant), met during a train ride from King’s Cross Station to Scotland, where they both intended to join the Royal Navy. When Anne complained of being cold on the train, Peter offered to share his coat with her, and the couple was married a little more than a year later. After their marriage, Peter and Anne left the navy and moved to the outskirts of Bristol, where Anne gave birth to Joanne Rowling and, less than two years later, a second daughter, named Dianne.

When Rowling was four years old, the family moved to Winterbourne, a nearby village. Although the two sisters frequently fought, they were extremely close, and Rowling would amuse Dianne by telling her imaginative stories, many of which she would write down. These stories would inspire long, dramatic scenarios that were enacted during their playtime, with the girls playing all of the parts. During their time in Winterbourne, Rowling also became friendly with a brother and sister who lived across the street and had the last name of Potter, a name which Rowling admitted she liked much more than her own.

In 1974, when Rowling was nine years old, the family moved again, this time to the country village of Tutshill in Wales. Almost at the same time as the family’s move, Rowling suffered the loss of her favorite grandmother, Kathleen (whose name she would eventually add to her own to come up with the pen name, J.K. Rowling). She finished her primary school studies at St. Michael’s Primary School, whose benevolent headmaster, Alfred Dunn, would supposedly serve as the inspiration for Professor Dumbledore.

At the age of eleven, Rowling began studying at Wyedean Comprehensive School and College. Lacking any natural athletic ability and with few friends, the lonely Rowling dedicated herself to her studies and her love of literature. Her interest in literature and writing was fueled when her aunt gave her a copy of Jessica Mitford’s autobiography, Hons and Rebels . Rowling promptly read all of Mitford’s other books and became a huge fan of the author. Interestingly, Rowling has commented on her studious adolescence, saying “Hermione is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was 11, which I'm not particularly proud of.” Rowling also supposedly based another Harry Potter character on an individual from Wyedean: John Nettleship, the head of science during her time at the school, has acknowledged himself as the inspiration for the malignant Professor Snape.

Despite her problems at Wyedean, Rowling continued to foster a secret hope of becoming a writer throughout her adolescence. This hope was encouraged by her close school friend, Sean Harris, to whom she dedicated the second book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets . Rowling’s teenage years were also made more difficult when her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

In 1983, Rowling graduated from Wyedean and began attending Exeter University for her B.A. in French. Although Rowling wanted to study English, her parents convinced her that a career as a bilingual secretary would give her more stability than a job in literature could. After graduation, Rowling moved to London and began to work as a bilingual secretary for Amnesty International, an organization that campaigns against human rights abuses. Rowling admits that she was not a very good secretary; instead of taking notes during meetings, she would jot down story ideas.

During a train ride from London to Manchester in 1990, Rowling first came up with the idea of a young boy who does not know that he is a wizard. Too shy to ask any of the other passengers for a pen, Rowling kept the ideas in her mind until the train arrived in Manchester, and then she immediately began to work on the story. Shortly after this initial inspiration, Rowling’s mother finally succumbed to multiple sclerosis, dying in December of 1990. Her death was a huge blow to Rowling and would greatly influence the direction of the story about the young wizard and the loss of his parents.

Still devastated by her mother’s death, Rowling moved to Portugal in 1991 to work as an English teacher at a language institute. She brought her ever-growing book manuscript with her and, during her first week in Portugal, wrote the twelfth chapter of the book, “The Mirror of Erised.” While in Portugal, Rowling met and married a Portuguese journalist and gave birth to a daughter, Jessica, in 1993. However, the marriage was rocky, and, in December of 1993, Rowling returned to Britain with her daughter and moved to Edinburgh, Scotland to be near her sister.

Unfortunately, in order to get a teaching position in Scotland, Rowling needed a postgraduate certification of education (PGCE), which required a year-long course of study. While unemployed and looking for a job, Rowling spent nearly every evening working on the book in local cafés while her daughter was asleep in her stroller.

After Rowling finished the book in 1995, she sent the first three chapters off to agents and began the course of study needed for the PGCE. The second agent that she contacted decided to take on the project and spent almost a year trying to find a publisher. The small Bloomsbury Children’s Books finally accepted the manuscript and published the book under the name Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in June 1997. Soon after its publication, Rowling’s book began to win numerous awards, including the British Book Award, the Nestle Smarties Book Prize, and the Children's Book Award.

Scholastic Press bought the American rights to the book (giving it the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ) and paid Rowling enough money to quit teaching and support herself solely by writing the next books in the Harry Potter series. The sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , was published in England in July 1998 and in America in June 1999, and the third book of the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , was published in England in July 1999 and in America in September 1999.

These first three Harry Potter books took the three top spots on the New York Times Bestseller List and earned Rowling $400 million, promptly making her the richest author in the world. In 1998, Rowling sold the film rights to the Harry Potter series, and the first film in the franchise was released in 2001. Rowling completed the remaining four books in the Harry Potter series between 2000 and 2007, with the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , selling 15 million copies within the first twenty-four hours of its release.

In 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray, a British anesthetist, and gave birth to their son, David, in 2003 and their daughter, Mackenzie, in 2005. Since her completion of the Harry Potter series, Rowling has received honorary degrees from St. Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, the University of Aberdeen, the University of Exeter, and Harvard University, as well as the Légion d’honneur from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. She is also an avid philanthropist and has donated much of her time and wealth to the Volant Charitable Trust, the charity One Parent Families, the Children’s High Level Group, and the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University.

Long after the novel series concluded, the Harry Potter world and franchise continues to grow with sites like Pottermore and the Fantastic Beasts films, which expand upon and create new apocryphal lore. Rowling has found herself at the center of controversy surrounding some of these new materials, including the creation of an American version of Hogwarts, Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, that critics and scholars say completely disregards and disrespects indigenous populations and portrays colonialism in a favorable light. More recently, Rowling has been criticized over a tweet defending Maya Forstater, a researcher with a history of making anti-trans comments on social media. Rowling has since published a highly controversial essay on her personal website entitled, "J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues," which has caused several Potter fan sites to distance themselves from the author.

Rowling has stated that she has no intention of continuing the Harry Potter series, but she has written The Tales of Beedle the Bard , a book of fairy tales mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , and has mentioned writing a definitive encyclopedia of Harry Potter's world.

Study Guides on Works by J.K. Rowling

The casual vacancy j.k. rowling.

When you are the author of one of the most successful children's fiction series of all time, deciding how to follow up on your success can be quite a dilemma. Fortunately, J.K. Rowling decided to commit to a number of "firsts" when she tackled the...

• Study Guide

The Christmas Pig J.K. Rowling

As part of her ongoing attempt to recapture that lightning in a bottle which made her a household name in millions of households around the globe with the publication of the original Harry Potter novel, J.K. Rowling published The Christmas Pig in...

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets J.K. Rowling

British author J.K. Rowling said that the idea for the Harry Potter series “fell into her head” in 1990 while she was riding a train from Manchester to London without a pen to write it down. While she started to write it that evening, her progress...

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child J.K. Rowling , Jack Thorne , John Tiffany

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play written by playwright Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany, and based on an original story by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

The story begins nineteen years after the Battle of Hogwarts in the...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows J.K. Rowling

The Deathly Hallows is the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter franchise (excluding Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ) written by J. K. Rowling. It's a phenomenal conclusion to this epic saga and was published by Bloomsbury...

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire is the fourth novel in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book series. Harry Potter is a book series about a young wizard who is trying to defeat Lord Voldemort. Lord Voldemort is a powerful Dark wizard who has killed many...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth and penultimate novel of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book series. The book series about a young wizard who is set to defeat a dark wizard named Lord Voldemort, who killed his parents when he was...

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the fifth book in the Harry Potter series, written by J.K. Rowling. In this book, Harry struggles under the heavy responsibility to face the evil Lord Voldemort and save the people he loves most. It is...

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone tells the story of an eleven-year-old orphan who suddenly discovers that he is a wizard. J.K. Rowling began writing the book in 1990, prompted by a delayed train ride from Manchester to London during which she...

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third novel in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In this book, the saga continues as Harry is faced with dementors, the soul-sucking guards of Azkaban prison that bring icy depression into the...

Ickabog J.K. Rowling

Written for children between seven and nine (Rowling remarked that the book is a "political fairytale for slightly younger children"), The Ickabog tells the story of a fantasy land called Cornucopia, which is plagued by an evil creature known as...

J.K. Rowling Labels Valentina Petrillo a ‘Cheat’ After Trans Sprinter Qualifies for Women’s Semi-Finals at Paris Paralympics Following Previous Wins in Men’s Category

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• J.K. Rowling Labels Valentina Petrillo a ‘Cheat’ After Trans Sprinter Qualifies for Women’s Semi-Finals at Paris Paralympics Following Previous Wins in Men’s Category 1 day ago
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J.K. Rowling is among a number of voices including former Olympic athletes decrying the inclusion of a trans sprinter in the women’s sprinting category at the Paris Paralympics.

51-year-old Petrillo Valentino Petrillo is set to represent Italy in the women’s T12 400m category after qualifying for the semi-finals on Monday. The semi-finals are set to take place later on Monday followed by the finals on Tuesday.

Petrillo, who is visually impaired, is also competing in the women’s T12 200M category.

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In a tweet, Rowling described the athlete as a “cheat,” writing sarcastically on X: “Why all the anger about the inspirational Petrillo? The cheat community has never had this kind of visibility! Out and proud cheats like Petrillo prove the era of cheat-shaming is over. What a role model! I say we give Lance Armstrong his medals back and move on.”

Mara Yamauchi, a two-time Olympian marathon runner, was among those also criticizing Petrillo’s inclusion in the women’s categories. “This makes my blood boil,” she tweeted as part of a long thread. “A talented, hard-working, exceptional female athlete is out of the T12 400m bc of a 50-year old father of two performing womanface on the world’s stage.”

Former tennis champ Martina Navratilova, who is currently commentating the U.S. Open for Sky Sports, retweeted Yamauchi’s comments, adding: “Amen to this thread! And stop telling it’s the democrats that did this. It’s men who are doing this- men in positions of power like IOC who make the rules and males who know they have advantage but compete against women anyway[.]”

Earlier Petrillo told the BBC the participation of a trans athlete was an “important symbol of inclusion.”

Khelif, who won the Olympic gold in the category, has since filed a criminal complaint with French authorities over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” in which Rowling and X owner Elon Musk are named.

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