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Chapter 1 : Childhood

Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born in Chipping Sodbury, England on 31st July, 1965. Mostly, her childhood was happy. But she does remember getting teased because of her surname. She recalls being called ‘Rowling pin’ by her school friends. She never really had much fondness towards her own name. However, she always was fond of the name ‘Potter’ from an early age.

Rowling studied at St. Michael’s Primary School in Gloucestershire, before she moved to Chepstow, South Wales at the age of nine. Right from an early age, she had the ambition to be a writer.

Often times, she would try her hand at writing. Nothing much came out of those misadventures. At the age of six, she wrote a book about a rabbit with measles! Her mother praised her for her efforts and Rowling wanted to know if it was good enough to get published. She does admit that it was an odd subject to write a story on and has no idea where the idea had popped into her head from.

Rowling has admitted with a lot of fondness in her own autobiography, that it was her good friend, Sean, who had first given her the assurance that she would be able to make a very good writer one day.

She says that Sean was also the only person who believed she would be a success at writing. She never told him back them how much his belief in her meant to her. He was the owner of the battered old Ford Anglia that makes an appearance in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It appears as an enchanted car that Harry and Ron fly to school, as part of one of their many misadventures.

After she had finished school, Rowling’s parents encouraged her to study French at the University of Exeter. She regretted her decision later on, for she had wanted to pursue English. Her parents believed that she needed to study something a little more useful that would help her land a job once she finished school.

After spending a year in Paris, Rowling graduated from university and took various jobs in London. One of her favourite jobs was working for Amnesty International, the charity that, campaigns against human rights abuses around the world. Amnesty International is just one of the many charities this truly remarkable woman supports after her new found wealth.

Chapter 2 : Adulthood

In 1991, J.K. Rowling left England to pursue a job as an English teacher in Portugal. It was here that she met her first husband, Jorge Arantes. They had a baby girl named Jessica. After a couple of years together, they split. It was due to a fierce argument and by the end of it; Rowling was thrown out of the house.

In December 1993, Rowling returned to UK, and moved to Edinburgh. There she tried to finish her first book. At that point of time she was surviving on state benefits and bringing up her daughter as a single parent. She would often sit in cafés to work on the book while her child took a nap.

Eventually she finished writing the first novel The Philosopher’s Stone and sent it off to various agents. An agent named Christopher spent over a year trying to find her a publisher. The book was rejected by 12 major publishing houses. Eventually, a rather small publishing house, Bloomsbury agreed to take on the book. The editor Barry Cunningham agreed to pay £1500 as an advance.

The decision to take a chance on Harry Potter was due to the fact Cunningham’s eight-year-old daughter’s enthusiastic response to the first chapter. After only a week of publication in 1996, the book sales started to completely take off. The initial print run of the book was 500 - 1000 copies. Some of these went to libraries.

First editions are now to be worth £25,000 each. Rowling received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council which enabled her to pursue writing fulltime. After her book’s initial success in the UK, an American company Scholastic agreed to pay a whooping £100,000 for the rights to publishing the series in America! There was a full-fledged bidding war between the American publishing houses, much to Rowling’s amusement.

In 1998, Warner Bros secured the rights to the books, and paid a seven-figure sum for the same. The films expanded the success of the books, making Harry Potter one of the most recognizable media products. The movies were made under the watchful eye of J.K. Rowling. The scripts stayed close to the original plot. As per her request, all the actors in the movie are British and they were entire series was filmed in Britain.

The final book of the Harry Potter series was completed on 21st December 2006. It was called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book was released in July 2007, and became one of the fastest selling books of all time. J.K. Rowling has gone on record to say that this book is her favourite and it makes her both happy and sad. Even though she said that she would continue writing, she was strongly of the opinion that there was little to no chance of her continuing the Harry Potter series.

However, the world of Harry Potter is so steeped in history and so filled with magic that never made into the series that she decided to write them down. She published a dictionary of things related to Harry Potter. Of which, Harry’s text books, Hogwarts: A History, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them were also written by her. She also wrote books like Tales of Beedle the Bard, Quidditch through the Ages etc. for charity.

In 2017, Rowling had announced on her website that she would publish two new books for an exhibition at the British Library that celebrated the 20th anniversary of the publication of her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

The books, Harry Potter: A History of Magic (described as the adult version) and Harry Potter: A Journey Through a History of Magic (the kid-friendly version) were released on October 20th, and feature manuscripts, original illustrations and an exploration of the Harry Potter characters and magic.

J.K. Rowling wrote The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a book that is mentioned in the Harry Potter series. This collection of five fables was released in 4 December 2008 at a tea party for 200 school children at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. Rowling donated all royalties from the book to the Children’s High Level Group Edinburgh (which has been renamed Lumos), a charity that she co-founded to support institutionalized children in Eastern Europe.

After the end of the Harry Potter series, she has continued writing short stories, and gave the go-ahead for the eighth Harry Potter – a play called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This was no very well-received by the Potter fans however for it destroyed a lot of theories that had been accepted as by fan base as head canon. Even today, Harry Potter continues to bring magic to the lives of everyone it has touched.

Today, there are Harry Potter themed birthdays, parties and even gender reveal! An entire generation who grew up with Harry Potter still draws references from the same.

Rowling released Casual Vacancy an adult novel on 27 September, 2012 to mixed reviews. The Cuckoo’s Calling was published in 2013. Initially no one knew that this was Rowling’s new work. She released it under the pen name Robert Galbraith. When it was discovered that Rowling is the author of the book, sales just went through the roof. For the world had waited a long time for Rowling to gift them with a new story. She continues to use this pen name for this series.

In her personal life, on December 26, 2001, J.K. Rowling married anesthetist Dr. Neil Murray at the couple’s home in Scotland. Their previous plans of getting married got leaked to the media and Rowling was deeply upset by the paparazzi. They have two children together, David (born in 2003) and Mackenzie (born in 2005). From her previous marriage, Rowling had Jessica (born in 1993).

Jessica grew up in the changing life of her mother. She was often at the limelight, and was constantly harassed by kids who wanted to know more about Harry Potter. She could not stand being the only child in her school to have not read the stories. So Rowling read them to her. However, Jessica had to wait with the rest of the world to find out what happened next. She had any new insights just because she was the author’s daughter.

J.K. Rowling shares her birthday with her titular character, Harry Potter. She adopted the pen name J.K. Rowling by incorporating her grandmother’s name, Kathleen, for the later initial. She actually does not have a middle name. In fact, this was done because her publishers were not too sure about young boys willing to read about a magical series written by a woman! This proved to be wrong because despite the revelation, sales of the books have continued going through the roof!

In 2017, according to Forbes, Rowling’s estimated wealth stood at $650 million. It would have been higher but she donated substantial amounts to charity. The global estimate for the Harry Potter brand is at £7 billion.

Due to her own struggles, Rowling has always been passionate about helping out others. She has contributed to substantial amounts of charity work. This includes:

Anti-poverty: She is the President of the Charity – One Parent Families.

Multiple Sclerosis: She has contributed money to the research and treatment of Multiple Sclerosis, which her mother suffered from.

Lumos: Helping institutionalized children in Eastern Europe.