Having sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling is the best-selling book series in history. Her wizarding world is the protagonist of many attractions all over the globe. But, what is the life story of the amazing writer that touched all of our hearts?
Joanne Rowling was born in South Gloucestershire, United Kingdom, on July 31st 1965, to Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling. She started writing from a young age some fantasy stories she read to her sister Dianne. When Rowling was a young teenager, her great-aunt gave her a copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became her heroine, and Rowling read all of her books.
Rowling’s teenage years were unhappy. Her relationship with her father was unhealthy and her mother struggled with multiple sclerosis. In 1982, Rowling took the entrance exams for Oxford University but was not accepted, and instead earned a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter.
In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind. In December, Rowling's mother, Anne, died after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis. Rowling was writing Harry Potter at the time and had never told her mother about it. Her mother's death deeply affected Rowling's writing, and she channeled her feelings of loss by writing about Harry's own feelings of loss in the first book.
An advertisement in The Guardian led Rowling to move to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language. She taught at night and worked on her book in the day. After 18 months in Porto, she met Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar and found they shared an interest in Jane Austen. They married on 16 October 1992 and their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes, was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal. The couple separated on 17 November 1993. Biographers have suggested that Rowling suffered domestic abuse during her marriage. In December of that year, Rowling and her daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near Rowling's sister. By that time, she had already written three chapters of the first Harry Potter book.
Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as a failure. Her marriage had failed and she was unemployed with a dependent child, but her failure liberated and allowed her to focus on writing. During this period, Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression and contemplated suicide. She was extremely poor. According to her, she was as “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless."
Rowling was left in despair after her estranged husband arrived in Scotland, seeking both her and her daughter. She obtained an Order of Restraint, and Arantes returned to Portugal, with Rowling filing for divorce in August 1994. She began a teacher training course in August 1995 at the Moray House School of Education, at Edinburgh University, after completing her first novel while living on state benefits. She wrote in many cafés, especially Nicolson's Café (owned by her brother-in-law), and the Elephant House, wherever she could get Jessica to fall asleep.
In 1995 the book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript. An year later she was finally given the green light by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London. In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000. Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year, and later, the Children's Book Award. In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for US$105,000. Rowling moved from her flat with the money from the Scholastic sale, into 19 Hazelbank Terrace in Edinburgh.
Her following two books, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize too, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.
The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the US on 8 July 2000 and broke sales records in both countries. 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equaling the number Prisoner of Azkaban sold during its first year. In the US, the book sold three million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all records. Rowling was named Author of the Year in the 2000 British Book Awards.
On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Murray, a Scottish doctor. Their son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003. Rowling's youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born on 23 January 2005.
She later wrote the series of adult novels Cormoran Strike, under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. When her true identity was discovered, the sales of the series increased in a 4,000%.
In 2017, Rowling was worth an estimated £650 million according to the Sunday Times Rich List. She was named the most highly paid author in the world, with earnings of £72 million a year, by Forbes in 2017.
Even though she struggled with depression, loss, poverty and many other issues, Rowling never gave up. She is now the role model of many young writers around the globe. Her life story is a clear example that with perseverance, faith and hard work, there is nothing that can’t be achieve.
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