Introduction

Joanne (Jo) Kathleen Rowling (pronounced Roe-ling) was born on July 31 1965 in Chipping Sudbury (a suitably christened birthplace for someone who tends to love odd names), near Bristol in England. Jo's life-long ambition was to be a writer and have a book published - to just see it on a shelf in a bookshop with her name on it. But it wasn't easy. She struggled for many years as single mother, living on a child welfare grant, and nipping out to cafes to write as often as possible. All the big publishers turned her down, and it looked like Harry Potter might not be published - until Bloomsbury bought the publishing rights for under £2000. Today, Jo is one of the most respected, popular and successful authors in literary history, and a multi-millionaire. The Harry Potter books have captured the imagination of millions the world over, and has been translated in over 50 different languages (only the Bible has more translations). Jo Rowling creates the magic behind the books we have all come to know and love... this page is a tribute to her.

Child hood

Jo describes her child hood as 'dreamy', she said she often played imagenary games in her yard and when ever she say a tree, she couldn't resist climbing it. Her most vivid memory of her childhood is reading Wind in the Willows. When she was just older than five, Jo began her first story called 'Rabbit' and was about a rabbit called 'Rabbit' also featuring a giant bee called 'Miss Bee' ('exhibiting the imaginative approach to names that has stood m in such good stead ever since'). Later on she wrote quite a long story called 'The Seven Cursed Diamonds'.

Her sister Di, who is about two years younger than her, always loved the fantastical stories that her older sister would tell her. Jo was quite outgoing as a child but she also very much enjoyed just spending time on her own reading and writing. She was encouraged to to this by her parents, Ann and Peter Rowling. Some of her favourate child hood stories included The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge ('whenever the characters had lunch for example, she always used to describe exactly what was on their sandwiches - I remember finding that incredibly satisfying as a child'), Manxmouse by Paul Gallico and the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. When Jo moved to Winterbourne near Bristol, she met two of her best friends, Ian and Vikki Potter. "Their surname was Potter," she once recalled, "I always liked the name." One of her favourate games to play with her sister and Ian and Vikki was dress-up and she would often suggest to dress up as witches and wizards.

Jo attended Tutshill Primary school and then to Wyedean Comprehensieve where in her final year, she became Head Girl and received high honors at the end of the year. She said Hermione came very easily to her because she's so much like her: "I was always very swotty - like Hermione, I had a sense of deeper rooted insecurity and tried to compensate for this - as a result I projected an over confident exterior, which I think others must have found quite irritating."

Jo moved to Chepster at the age of nine, a small country-side town. During her teens, Jo was into 'very dramatic, gritty realism', although she says that living in the country-side meant: "It was hard to be a dis-affected urban youth in the middle of a muddy field." Jo says she used to do a lot of writing in her bedroom in their Chepster cottage and has many happy memories of her time there. She says he used to hang out of her window, smoking: "Which wasn't very clever because there would be a pile of cigarette ends beneath my window ... I would say 'Oh yes, dad, it's those people at the bar throwing their cigarettes into our garden again.'" It was during her late teens that Jo struck up a very important friendship in her life with a man called Sean. Like her, Sean was a late-arriver to the area and did not have a local accent - they were both outsiders in a sense, something that Jo thinks might have drawn them together. Sean was the first out of Jo's friends to get a car, she says he was: "the coolest man in school with his longish hair and Ford Anglia". Jo says this car was absolute freedom to her. She and Sean would drive off into the country in his Ford Anglia (like the Weasleys' Anglia), or sit under the bridge talking about life and drinking. "This was the most exciting thing in the world at 17, those urban kids don't know what they missed! My heart still lifts when I see an old Ford Anglia ... which is a bit sad really."

JK's adult Life before Harry

Her parents thought that Jo should study French and literature, due to her love of language - which might lead to a steady career as a bilingual secretary. Although Jo really wanted to write, she followed their advice and studied at Exeter University. After graduating, she started applying for various jobs. She held an endless string of boring secreterial jobs for a while (getting fired once or twice because she would begin writing on the job when no-one was watching). She was invited by an old boyfriend to try out for a new job in London. She got the job and so commuted between Manchester and London all the time.

On one train trip back to Manchester in 1990, there was a problem with the train and it was delayed for four hours. She stared out the window at a group of cows grazing in a meadow in front of her. Jo describes what happened next, "I was sitting on the train, just staring out the window at some cows. It was not the most inspiring subject. When all of a sudden the idea for Harry just appeared in my mind's eye. I can't tell you why or what triggered it. But I saw the idea of Harry and wizard school very plainly. I suddenly had the basic idea of a boy who didn't know what he was. It was as if Harry had just walked into my head, fully formed." She says it was an incredibly exciting feeling: "It was a rush of excitement ... I'd never had such a physical feeling like this before to with writing. It was that feeling you get when you meet someone who you might eventually fall in love with. That rush, that light-headedness. As I got off that train, it was as if I'd met someone truly wonderful, and we were about to embark on a wonderful affair. That was ten ago ... it's been a long affair."

Over the next couple of months, she worked on Harry's story, writing on anything she could find. Her mother Ann had been suffering from multiple-sclerosis for the past decade and died suddenly at the age of fourty-five. This left Jo distraught: 'Fourty-five was way to young to die, too young to leave your family, to never find out what we all ended up doing.' She says Ann particularly loved reading and writing and it was especially painful that she never got to see Harry published. Jo reflects that she had just begin to write the first few chapter of the first HP book prior to her mother's death, and had disposed of Harry's parents in a rather detached way, with no emotions or discussion on the issue. However, her mother's death made the emotions real, she was experiencing what she was writing and her expression of Harry's dealing with deaths were therefore more painful and emotional.

Jo travelled to Portugal in 1990 to become an English teacher. Here she met her ex-husband who was a Portuguese journalist. Soon after she gave birth to her daughter Jessica, in 1993, she got divorced. She moved to Edinburugh to try and rebuild her life, but things did not improve. She was very poor, a single mother with a small child and all she had was a 'grotty' flat and a stack full of notes which would later become the first Harry Potter book (she says she wants to make it clear that it was not so bad that she had to write on napkins, as many journalists have said). She became quite depressed during this time and it was from depression that she conceived of the idea of Dementors, creatures that suck out all one's happy memories, causing us to dwell on our most terrible ones and making us feel as if we'd never be happy again. Jo lived off a child welfare grant, and the money her friend Sean loaned her - it was impossible for her to get a proper job because she ahd to look after her young child. She did a lot of writing in cafes, particularly in Nicholson's: "They had so many tables that I didn't feel guilty taking one to write on. They were quite sympathetic to me ... I remember joking that if I ever became famous writing Harry, I'd give them a lot of publicity." She says that she wrote in cafes because she found the atmosphere conducive, not, as some journalists speculated because she wanted to escape her unheated flat: "I was NOT so stupid as to rent an unheated flat in Edinburgh in the middle of winter!"

That Christmas she went to visit her sister Di and for the first time shared her story about Harry with someone. Di immediately loved it. "It's possible that if she had not laughed, I would have just set the whole thing to one side," JK recalled to the Daily Telegraph, "But Di did laugh." This gave her the confidence to press on. She made many attepts to get Harry published but was turned down countless times by big publishers. They said her book was to difficult to sell, as it dealt with the rather obscure subject of magical realism and fantasy, did not have a definite age range, told the unusual story of a boy attending a magical school (education was not a very politically correct subject to discuss at the time), and entailed seven books covering seven years of this boy's life as he grew and developed. Ironically, it is these very things that have made the books such a success.

She met the literary agent Christopher Little who agreed to help her get it published. He warned her that even if it did get published: "Childrens authors don't do very well, and I should definitely keep my real job. All I ever wanted was for somebody to publish Harry so I could go to the bookshops and see it. I know I'm not going to make any money out of it. I know I'm not going to be famous."

Finally, Bloomsbury agreed to publish the books. When Chris told Jo that Harry would be published, there was a long silence ... "just enough to build up a big scream", he says. Chris said: "Are you alright?" and Jo replied: "Yes ... it's just that my only ambition in life has been fulfilled!" Jo says that besides the birth of her daughter, it was the happiest moment of her life. Bloomsbury bought the rights for less than £2000. The Bloomsbury agent who conducted the deal says of the all the publishers that turned Jo down: "Can you imagine? They must be kicking themselves! It's like turning down the Beatles!"

Harry captures the imagination of the world

Everything went uphill from there. Although by the time the second book was published, Jo was still not making enough to write full time (she was teaching), the first Harry Potter book was gaining in popularity and avid fans. Jo did her first book reading at the Edinburgh Book Festival for a small group, mostly comprised of staff members who took pity on her. Then Jo hit the big-time - America.

Scholastic bought the American publishing rights for the first Harry Potter for $105 000, and the books sales payed one-hundred-thousand times as much - JK no longer had to teach to earn a living ...

The first book's successers became unbelievable hits. When the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban, was released in 1999, it and the other two books becamet he first three books by the same author to occupy the New York Times Best Sellers List.

By the beggining of 2000, Pottermania had really taken hold and had spread to the rest of the world. In July 2000, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire saw a first printing of 5.3 million copies and advance orders of over 1.8 million. 2001 brought the charity publication of Fantatic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, two of Harry's school books. These were also immensely popular and sold millions of copies.

On June 21 2003, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released - it broke the record for the largest ever internet order and it is likely it will continue to break more records.

In November 2001, the eargerly awaited first motion picture of the first book was released, and set new records the weekend it opened. The 2nd and 3rd films did almost as well. Warner Bros. are planning to do seven films in all, to cover the seven books in the series.

Jo has come a long way from that 'grotty' flat in Edinburgh. She has become a multi-millionaire and is arguably most famous, most loved living authors in the world. The The Harry Potter books have been translated into over 45 different languages, have been distributed to so many different countries that it is impossible to list them all, have sold over 60 million copies and have around a billion devoted fans world wide. Her books have earned huge acclaim and many of awards, as well as breaking numerous records. Harry Potter has become a global phenomonen and a household name. Jo's book-signings and readings resemble rock concerts. Fans could only get a place at her Order of the Phoenix book reading and Q & A session at the 2004 Edinburgh Book Festival by winning competitions because there would just be too many people who would want to attend. She receives so many letters that it would be impossible to even read them all, let alone reply to them. As a result, she has established a website that she regularly updates, a means through which to communicate with fans.

What does the future hold?

Jo married Neil Murray, a thirty-something year old doctor on the 26th of December 2001 at their holiday house in Scotland. In March 2003, she had her first son and second child, whom she named David. Bets were pledged on what her son would be named before he was born: 10 to 1 for Daniel (after Daniel Radcliffe), 15 to 1 for Hermione (if it was a girl), 20 to 1 for Harry and 200 to 1 for Voldemort! Jo is expecting a third child next year. She says she's always wanted three children.

Jo plans another two Harry Potter books, bringing an end to Harry's seven years at Hogwarts and his magical education. She has the entire series plotted out and has already written the final chapter for book 7: "It's an epilogue, which explains what happens to everyone when they leave school - those that survive. I wrote it so that I can say to myself that I am going to get there one day - and then I'll need this." She admits that it will be sad to finally say good-bye to Harry but she promises there will be no Harry Potter mid-life crises or Harry Potter in his old age. She says that she might publish an encyclopedia of all the information that will never find its way into the books. But according to her that won't be the end of writing. "I don't feel normal if I haven't written for a while. I can't imagine doing anything else."

Jo has hinted that the next step after Harry would be to write more adult novels but she knows it is impossible that they will be as popular as Harry, and that's alright with her. "I will have lived with Harry for 13 years and I know I'll probably have to take some time off to grieve. But then I'll be on with the next book."

Which is a comforting thought for all us obsessed Harry Potter fans, who love nothing more than to curl up in bed and lose our selves in Harry's world. Thankyou, Jo, for bringing joy to the lives of so many people.

A lot of information for this biography was gathered from:
JK Rowling, The Wizard Behind Harry Potter, An Unauthorized Biography by Marc Shapiro
and
'Harry and Me' - the official JK Rowling Documentry (in her own words) from BBC