When was j.k. rowling born

Her sudden penury made her realize that it was "back-against-the-wall time" and she decided to finish her "Harry Potter" book. She sent the manuscript to two agents and one publisher, looking up likely prospects in the library. One of these agents that she picked at random based on the fact that she liked his name, Christopher Little, was immediately captivated by the manuscript and signed her on as his client within three days.

Several publishers turned down the manuscript before Bloomsbury agreed to purchase it in Sign In. Edit J. Showing all items. She writes most of her novels in longhand, rather than with a computer. Her novel, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", was the top-selling novel of , with 7 million hardcovers sold. When the first "Harry Potter" novel was published, the publisher asked her to use initials rather than her first name, because boys would be biased against a book written by a woman.

Since she only had one given name, they then asked her to make up another initial; she took "K. Rowling had lifted ideas from her novel "The Legend of Rah and Muggles" , which includes a character called Larry Potter. However, the case against J. Rowling was dismissed on September 19, , when the judged ruled that Ms. Stouffer had lied to the court and doctored evidence to support her claims. Is one of only two contemporary authors to have a novel spend more than a year on both the New York Times hardcover and paperback best-seller lists, the other author being Nicholas Sparks.

As of November , the year and month of the second "Harry Potter" movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets being released, her franchise of books have currently sold over ,, copies and printed in over languages to become the biggest and fastest selling novels ever. It was deemed to plagiarize Rowling's novel "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and to infringe upon her copyright. It was approximately pages long, containing 38 chapters and over , words, making it her longest "Harry Potter" novel yet.

The first U. In , unauthorized Chinese-language "sequels" to the "Harry Potter" series appeared for sale in the People's Republic of China. These poorly-written novels, by Chinese ghost writers, contain characters from the works of other authors, including Gandalf from J.

Tolkien 's "Lord of the Rings" and the title character from L. Frank Baum 's "The Wizard of Oz". Rowling's lawyers successfully took legal action against the publishers, who were forced to pay damages.

Is a huge fan of "Monty Python" and claims to put some of their humor into her novels. Two apparent references to the "Monty Python" sketch "Crunchy Frog" can be found in her "Harry Potter" novels: two of the sweets are a chocolate frog, and a cockroach cluster.

On July 7, , she received an honorary degree from Edinburgh University, in recognition of the Potter books and her outstanding contribution to children's literature. Character names in her novels are often clues to their identities or secrets. For example, Professor Remus Lupin is a werewolf. According to myth, Romulus and Remus were the founders of Rome and were raised by wolves. His last name, Lupin, is derived from the Latin lupus, for wolf, and the English adjective lupine, meaning wolf-like.

Lupin was converted into a werewolf by Fenrir Greyback, whose name is taken from Fenrir, the monstrous wolf son of Loki in Norse mythology. Lewis 's "Chronciles of Narnia". Sirius Black, who turns into a black dog, is named for the star Sirius, which can be found in the constellation Canis Major - the big dog. Whilst at Exeter University she had little money so, for friends' birthdays, she wrote them personal little stories. After spending six years writing the first installment of her "Harry Potter" novels, Rowling was rejected by nine publishers before London's Bloomsbury Publishing signed her on.

The day she signed her contract for the first "Harry Potter" novel, the publishing representative told her she would not make any money selling children's books. Originally wrote the "Harry Potter" novels to pay off her gas bills while living in a tiny flat with her baby daughter. Although she incorporates characteristics of people she knows into "Harry Potter" characters, she says that the character Gilderoy Lockhart is the only character she purposely based on someone she knew.

She would not say who she based the character on, only that it was not her ex-husband, and that whoever it was is probably so ignorant and so narcissistic, that he is probably claiming either to be the basis for Albus Dumbledore, or the real author of the "Harry Potter" novels. Claims her first audience for the "Harry Potter" novels was her daughter, to whom she would read parts of the story that she wrote as a bedtime story. Owns two properties in the Perthshire and Edinburgh areas of Scotland.

In , she hired a former SAS officer as her bodyguard to patrol her Perth home and protect her family. Was almost barred from boarding a plane from the United States to the United Kingdom when airport security personnel demanded that her manuscript for her final book be screened or placed in her checked luggage. Rowling refused to give up the manuscript, which was bound with rubber bands. Finished writing the final novel in the fantasy franchise three weeks ago - and marked the occasion by leaving graffiti in a Scottish hotel.

Eagle-eyed guests at the five-star Balmoral Hotel spotted a line from the best-selling author scrawled in black pen on the back of a marble bust in a room Rowling occupied. She wrote, "J. Is the first author billionaire, according to Forbes magazine Her hero is Robert F. Like her hero, she currently resides in a castle.

Ranked 14 in the Telegraph's list "the most powerful people in British culture". In the special double issue of Time magazine December 31, , she was a runner-up at 3 as "Person of the Year" after political leaders Vladimir Putin 1 and Al Gore 2.

To date Summer , she's the best-selling author in the history of literature. She's also the first author to become a billionaire from writing novels. It should not be surprising that Stephen King is one of her biggest fans.

Not only are they both best-selling authors of supernatural stories, they were also both schoolteachers before becoming successful writers. Her Harry Potter novels have appealed to both children and adults. To help attract both audiences, her British hardcover publisher actually releases each of the novels with two different dust jackets. One features a realistic picture or photograph of an element of the story, designed to appeal to adults.

The other features a comic-book like illustration of a scene from the story, designed to appeal to children. November 11, During the course of a brief interview in London's West End just prior to the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 , she revealed that, of all the movie adaptations of her novels, this was her all-time and personal favorite. 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. Pressured by her parents to become a secretary, Rowling attended the University of Exeter beginning at age 18 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. While on a train to London in , 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, 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. Although the marriage proved a bad one, the couple had one child together, Jessica born July Rowling soon returned — with a police presence — to take her daughter, and within weeks they were on a plane back to the U.

Rowling signing a copy of 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'. 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. 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.

Upon completing her manuscript in , 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.

On June 26, , the author saw her hard work come to fruition with the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the U. She was now known as "J. 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. The highly successful sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets followed a year later, and by the fall of , Warner Bros.

The rest reads like a fairy tale: Rowland was a billionaire by when Hollywood was still only halfway through eight Harry Potter films and well before the launch of another cash-cow franchise, Fantastic Beasts.